I don't know if I'll achieve it, but I have a goal of having all course material posted being OA. - Steve Koch

Steve, what is your employer's policy concerning sharing educational materials? - Pawel Szczesny

Pawel -- I don't know. It's a state (New Mexico) university and my personal policy is that I am paid by the tax payers and I can and should share everything. When I was hired, I was told the course that I was teaching and that's about it. Nothing ever even close to talking about whether I can share materials. I'm pretty sure everyone in my department would support it. Is there some rule against it somewhere in this bureaucracy I work for? Maybe, but I never signed anything about it. - Steve Koch

Maybe I should ask again on OS mailing list, but in general I'm trying to find out what is a 'norm' concerning sharing of educational materials. Given conditions of work-for-hire, in theory I should ask for a waiver each time I publish an article, especially OA one. In practice (the 'norm') university doesn't care and agrees by default. However I know already that I don't have green light as for sharing edu materials under any conditions. Therefore I try to collect data on 'norm' on that issue in other places. Hence the question and thanks for the prompt answer! - Pawel Szczesny

Pawel, this is exactly the discussion my supervisor and I have been having for almost a year now. There are a few rules in place (I'm also at a US state university) -- most specifically, the contract we sign that says everything we produce while here "belongs" to the university -- though this contract doesn't necessarily conflict with an open policy on education materials b/c the contract is really intended to impact those gaining patents, making $$ from their university-based work. But some work is not easy to classify; e.g. we have a grad-faculty workshop series (for which I have just been appointed coordinator) that has a few "free" items, but mostly is fee-based. The services are internal to UF. Because I inevitably created web pages to teach from, my supervisor is _very_ concerned that we not make everything freely available b/c we lose our clients. This is troublesome b/c new administrative policies have placed the burden for raising funds on departments/centers, even those not funded by grant research $$. So, I have agreed to divide work between that which is free and open, and that which is not. - Mickey Schafer

That being said, my supe has very much turned the corner on open access educational texts, not so much b/c I've been arguing it, but b/c a prof at another university has recently placed a freely available, web-based grammar text on line and gee, he's getting a lot of attention for this. So, my push to create a text about discipline-specific writing/communication is suddenly a much more attractive proposition, and sufficiently so that he has agreed to fund 1/2 this summer's employment so I can get the template written. - Mickey Schafer

So, my guess is there will be a lot of variation in this practice, some of it tied to university policy (I am sort of shocked that Steve didn't have to sign anything, since I was signing that exclusivity agreement even as a grad student -- and have had past supervisors openly greedy for material that I produced to be economically viable) and some of it dictated by internal needs of individual departments. I have no problem making lots of what I produce open b/c the likelihood of making any serious $$ on yet another text about writing science reports is so slim as to be ludicrous. Short of publishers like Flatworld Knowledge, there's little incentive to go the publishing route. And in reality, UF doesn't seem to pursue $$ unless they are really big (bio-industry here has its own legal center b/c of the need to negotiate with the university over $$). - Mickey Schafer

Steve, when you say all ed materials being posted "OA" -- what special process do you have to go through? All my stuff is available via the open web, as is most of the stuff at our center. This wasn't b/c of any ethical stance on OA, though, but b/c none of us like the CMS system well enough to be constrained by it. It's just easier to have web-based/assisted classes with all the materials needed linked from there. I think I am the only one using an explicit CC statement on my pages, though. - Mickey Schafer

All of the materials here: http://www.mendeley.com/spread-... can be added to your course wiki. I'll make sure the license is displayed properly on slideshare if need be, but I think it's already cc-by or CC0. Is that what you were looking for? - Mr. Gunn

Mr. Gunn, that is perfect, thank you! - Steve Koch

@Mickey I don't have any special process, or at least I'm not aware of one. I don't think I signed anything about it either. Seems like maybe your bureaucrats are more organized? - Steve Koch

Oh, and now I see that you're talking about IP agreements, and yes I definitely signed something about that. I'll have to re-read it to find out what it says about educational materials--I just only had research in mind at the time. But even with that, I don't think it put any restrictions on publishing / sharing. We've been doing open notebook science / open data for a long time now and no complaints from anyone. - Steve Koch

I guess it's clear I don't know the rules here or even where they'd be written. But the "norms" that Pawel asks about are easier to see. At U. New Mexico and other places I've been (Cornell, Michigan), PIs and students have acted as though they are free to share publicly whatever information they've wanted to. - Steve Koch

Mickey, Steve, I guess recent commitment of $2B to OER changes situation concerning opening educational resources, doesn't it? Steve, either you unconsciously choose the best places to work in respect to openness, or you're extremely persuasive :) My experience with US universities (although limited and quite a while ago and not from perspective of independent researcher/lecturer) wasn't very similar to yours. - Pawel Szczesny

Pawel, I feel my experiences have been mixed as well, though I'm not sure the university itself intended this. My current choices are driven partially by $$ -- we have to make some of our own in a business model, not an educational one, and that means I must respect that need or work somewhere else. To me, there is something sneaking about CMS use (blackboard, Sakai, e-learning) b/c they encourage educators to place material in university-controlled password-locked portals, using the lure of efficiencies, and discouraging ethical examination. - Mickey Schafer

Steve, the contract I signed stipulated "all creative output" not just stuff that is patent-able. Reality is that the university doesn't pursue litigation unless the creator is making a bunch of $$ on it. For textbooks and such, I don't think this is a problem, although we have mandates restricting use if students have to pay for them. Doesn't seem to me as though those mandates are well respected, particularly by science faculty who've produced basic sciences textbooks. - Mickey Schafer

The biggest mistake I made in my teaching is using publisher materials in some of my recorded lectures (like solutions to problem sets in textbooks). Those lectures cannot be made public. I tried to persuade the publisher to allow sharing but no luck. If you have to use textbook material use one of the many high quality free online textbooks now available in most fields. - Jean-Claude Bradley

@Jean-Claude do you know of a reliable hub to find free online textbooks in all fields? So far I've done a little linking to searchable books in Pub Med but haven't found a site besides that that will provide sources. I probably don't want one single textbook, but since we're interdisciplinary I'd want to link to many different ones (thermodynamics, stat mech, molecular biology, cell biology, etc.). Thanks for any info! - Steve Koch

Steve no I didn't find a single source - I just collected them as I came across them and put them here http://chem242.wikispaces.com/resourc... - Jean-Claude Bradley