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COMENTARIOS DEL EDITOR

Este número de Hermes le presenta a los lectores reflexiones y discusiones en torno a temas de gran relevancia para la enseñanza en línea, como lo son: los factores que influyen en la participación de la facultad en el uso de tecnologías basadas en el Web, el desarrollo de cursos en línea para adiestrar a los/as profesores/as sobre tecnologías de aprendizaje y el problema de cómo evitar que los estudiantes se copien en los exámenes.

Comenzamos con un artículo de la Dra. Aury Curbelo, del Recinto Universitario de Mayagüez, quien discute los resultados de su estudio sobre los obstáculos que confrontan los profesores de educación agrícola en los Estados Unidos para integrar las tecnologías de comunicación e información a sus cursos. Entre las barreras que identificaron estos profesores se encuentran : falta de tiempo concedido por la administración, falta de incentivos económicos, falta de una política institucional, sobrecarga académica y la falta de recursos económicos, entre otros. A pesar de que la muestra de este estudio es de profesores de educación agrícola, nos parece que estos obstáculos son los mismos que confrontan los profesores de otras disciplinas en Puerto Rico y otras países.

El profesor Douglas Young, director del Centro de Educación a Distancia de la Universidad Texas Pan-American, describe un curso en línea desarrollado para adiestrar a profesores en el diseño instruccional de cursos a distancia. Este curso es ofrecido tanto en inglés como español y puede convertirse en una forma de complementar los adiestramientos sobre enseñanza en línea ofrecidos a la facultad.

El Dr. Robert Bramucci, Decano del Open Campus del Riverside Community College District, nos presenta un protocolo para lidiar con el problema del copiarse en los exámenes. Muchas de sus sugerencias pueden ser aplicadas a los cursos en línea y representan un modelo que puede

aminorar significativamente este problema.

Por último, Stephen Downes, investigador en el “National Research Council of Canada”, nos ofrece unas reflexiones muy interesantes en torno a los derechos de autor desde una perspectiva que trasciende los modelos tradicionales que se han utilizado para abordar este tema.

Esperamos que disfruten este número de la misma manera que hemos disfrutado la preparación del mismo.

FACTORS INFLUENCING FACULTY PARTICIPATION IN WEB-BASEDDISTANCE EDUCATION TECHNOLOGIESAURY M. CURBELO-RUIZ, PH.DAssistant Professor University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez Campus

TEACHING ONLINE IN HIGHER EDUCATION: AN ONLINE FACULTY WORKSHOP IN ONLINE PEDAGOGYDOUGLAS A. YOUNG, MADirector, Center for Distance LearningUniversity of Texas-Pan American

A PROTOCOL TO PREVENT CHEATING ON EXAMINATIONSROBERT S. BRAMUCCI, PH.D.Dean, Open Campus at Riverside CommunityCollege District

COPYRIGHT, ETHICS AND THEFTSTEPHEN DOWNESSenior Researcher, National Research Council of Canada

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Revista del Centro de Enseñanza Complementada por Internet

Mario Núñez MolinaEditor

David Zapata MenesesArtista Gráfico

Recursos creados por el Centro

Criticas a nuevas tecnologías

Recursos en la Internet

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FACTORS INFLUENCING FACULTY PARTICIPATION IN WEB-BASED DISTANCEEDUCATION TECHNOLOGIESAURY M. CURBELO-RUIZ, PH.DAssistant Professor University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez Campus

ABSTRACTThe use of web-based technologies continues to grow. College and universities must take a proactive stance to meet the educational needs of society in the 21st Century. The adoption and use of web-based technologies are the methods that colleges and universities can embrace to meet the task of educating the students of the 21st Century. Greater use of web-based distance education technology is needed to improve productivity and expand access to different educational programs.

The purpose of the study was to investigate factors which influenced faculty participation in web-based distance education technologies for delivering instruction in agricultural programs. In addition, the study sought to discuss faculty perceptions on their level of competence, level of importance, availability of infrastructure, training, and perceived major barriers faced in using web-based distance education technologies for delivering instruction in agricultural programs. Multiple regression analysis was used to predict factors that influenced faculty participation in web-based distance education.

Based on the 88% of the responses, findings of this investigation suggested that faculty have a high level of competence/skills using web-based technologies. In addition, this study found that educators considered the use of web-based technologies to enhance their teaching to be helpful and important. Concerning the availability of infrastructure provided by institutions, educators indicated that training, technical assistance and equipment are available to used. Faculty respondents identified six major barriers that would inhibit their decision to participate in using web-based technologies to deliver distance education. Those barriers were: (1) the lack of administratively provided time, like professional development leave, to learn to use web-based technologies; (2) the lack of a reward and incentives that encourages faculty to participate in web-based distance education; (3) the lack of credit toward tenure and promotion; (4) concern about workload; (5) the lack of grants materials/expenses (funding); and, (6) concern about the effects of distance education technology on the quality of the courses. Finally, regression model yielded two predictor variables: Level of competence/skills and lack of grant material/expenses (funding). The variables included in the multiple regression model accounted for 33% of the faculty participation in web-based distance education.

INTRODUCTIONTechnology has been the source of much revolutionary activity in many of the functions at colleges and universities. Today, something new and very important is occurring. New web-based technologies in academic instruction and communication are establishing a foothold on many American campuses, and in time, these technologies may significantly influence the way these institutions of higher education perform their basic mission of educating learners (Brooks, 1999). Distance learning (DL) is one product of these developments. Kayworth and Koch (1997) stated that distance learning was one of education’s “boom” areas, and that it was growing to where some experts predicted that it would eventually become the normal mode of instruction.

A national study (U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, 1989) reported that nearly half of the state colleges and universities surveyed offered distance education (DE) courses. Ten percent of state colleges and universities awarded full degree programs via distance education (U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, 1989). Clearly, the most prominent trend was the exploding number and variety of distance education courses offered by state colleges and institutions of higher education (Distance Education Policy Recommendation, 1996). Distance learning is emerging as an increasingly important educational component of higher education’s instructional delivery systems (Greene & Meek, 1997). Furthermore, Jayaraman and Piper (1998) added that the market for distance learning (DL) had experienced significant expansion and was expected to grow at a rate of 25% to 35% per annum over the next few years. Today, many educational institutions are taking advantage of telecommunications technology by developing and delivering distance education conferences, workshops, courses, and programs. The increasing availability of telecommunications has also provided agricultural faculty, extension educators, and professionals with unique opportunities to plan and deliver distance education courses and programs. However, Newcomb (1992) indicated that agricultural distance education would not reach its potential until educators learned to plan and deliver instruction differently, using a variety of methods and techniques.

Moreover, collegiate faculty members are increasingly being asked to teach in a distance-learning environment. Many of these DL faculty members are not adequately

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prepared for their DL obligations (Brooks, 1999). Brooks (1999) stated that as the educational model for delivering instruction broadens, technologies continue to advance, educational delivery methods continue to expand, and audiences become more diversified, faculty remain a key element in the teaching and learning process. Olcott and Wright (1995) indicated that the responsibility for instructional quality and control, the improvement of learning, and the aggregate effectiveness of distance education still rested with the faculty.

Ultimately, it is the faculty who need to be aware of diverse technologies and delivery methods available for distance education so they can incorporate them into their teaching and learning strategies. To use distance-learning strategies, faculty may need to alter teaching styles used within the “traditional classroom,” and develop new skills to effectively reach the distant learner. Dillon and Walsh (1992), and Clark (1993), both observed that faculty using distance education technology faced a variety of challenges when adapting their teaching styles to a framework compatible with the distance-learning environment. In 1992, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting reported to Congress that faculty needed to understand the relationship between learning, interactivity, and technology, as well as how to operate the technology. Willis and Touchstone (1996) indicated that to be successful in distance education, faculty needed training before their initial teaching experience. Therefore, the challenge is to prepare faculty for the distance teaching experience. While opportunities have existed for delivering distance education, faculty often expressed concerns about teaching via distance (Carl, 1991; Clark, 1993; Olcott, Jr. & Wright, 1995).

Furthermore, Rockwell, Schauer, Fritz, and Marx (1999) found that faculty reported major obstacles to teaching via distance were developing effective technology skills along with obtaining necessary assistance and support. For faculty to be successful in distance education teaching, higher education institutions must take into account the wants, needs, interests, and aspirations of the faculty in an effort to help faculty develop distance learning educational models and techniques.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMDistance education uses communication technologies, such as web-based technology, to link vast arrays of resources and makes technologies available to stimulate and support the development of learning skills (Brooks, 1999). However, more information is needed about the distance-learning environment so that faculty, administrators, institutions, and students can be successful in that setting. Therefore, institutions of higher education have become obligated to reexamine information technology as a tool for increasing the academic and administrative potential of faculty, staff, and students. Even though an increasing amount of research is being conducted in the field of distance

education, most current research into distance learning has focused on the students, the curriculum, and the technology (Dillon & Walsh, 1992; Purdy & Wright, 1992). However, Beaudoin (1990) argued that the importance of the faculty as a group has been largely neglected by much of the current research.

The problem is that there is insufficient information to clarify factors which influenced faculty participation in web-based distance education for delivering instruction in agricultural programs. In order to improve facilitation of faculty involvement in web-based distance education, it is necessary to study and determine what factors influenced faculty members’ to participate in web-based distance education from a faculty perspective. Because of the limited research regarding the factors influencing faculty participation in web-based distance education, an in-depth study to identify those factors was appropriate. Faculty level of competence, level of importance, availability of infrastructure training and major barriers faced in using web-based distance education technologies can provide important information to use in sustaining faculty members and in helping distance education programs achieve higher levels of efficiency and effectiveness.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDYThe purpose of this descriptive-correlational study was to investigate factors which influenced faculty participation in web-based distance education for delivering instruction in agricultural programs at a land grant institution. In addition, the study sought to discuss faculty perceptions on their level of competence, level of importance, availability of infrastructure, training, and perceived major barriers faced in using web-based distance education technologies for delivering instruction in agricultural programs. To guide the study, the following research objectives were investigated:

1. Describe what were the selected personal and professional characteristics (age, gender, tenure status, and years of teaching experience, teaching load, academic rank, and region) of agricultural teacher educators (faculty).

2. Describe how many of the faculty had a website, how was it used, where the course website resided, software used, computer operating system used, and who created or maintained the website.

3. Describe training related to the use of web-based and videoconferencing technology to deliver distance education, where training on web-based and videoconferencing technologies was received, and how many courses have been taught using web-based distance education by the agricultural teacher educators.

4. Describe what was the perceived level of competence that agricultural teacher educators have in the use of

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web-based technologies.

5. Describe agricultural teacher educators perceptions of the level of importance that web-based technologies have or will have in teaching and learning.

6. Determine the perceived availability of infrastructure for agricultural teacher educators to use web-based technologies.

7. Describe what the agricultural teacher educators perceived as major barriers for participating in the use of web-based technologies for delivering distance instruction in agricultural settings.

8. Explain the variance in the dependent variable, participation in web-based distance education, through a linear combination of the independent variables

LIMITATION OF THE STUDYThis study has the following limitations:The applicability of this research was limited to agricultural teacher educators listed in the American Association of Agricultural Educators (AAAE) directory on February 14, 2002. Since this study was exploratory descriptive-correlational in its nature, it was limited by the fact that the researcher may not have included all appropriate variables for predicting the dependent variables.

POPULATIONThe target population for the current study was agricultural teacher educators. The accessible population for this study was agricultural teacher educators listed in the Directory of University Faculty in Agricultural Education provided by the American Association of Agricultural Educators (AAAE) on February 14, 2002. The selected population included practicing agricultural teacher educators as defined by Cano (2002) and Castillo (1999).

Castillo (1999) in a national study of agricultural teacher educators, asked the department chairs at their respective university to identify those who were agricultural teacher educators. The Castillo (1999) list of teacher educators was purged by Cano (2002) to delete those teacher educators who were no longer employed by a university. In addition, those newly hired agricultural teacher educators were added to the list by Cano (2002).

The final list of agricultural teacher educators was further verified by comparing the generated list of agricultural teacher educators with the AAAE directory. The list of practicing agricultural teacher educators included 98 individuals (n=98). A census was used for the study.

METHODOLOGYResearch DesignThe current study investigated the factors which influenced agricultural teacher educators participation in

web-based distance education for delivering instruction in agricultural programs. In addition, the study sought to discuss agricultural teacher educators’ perceptions of their level of competence, level of importance, availability of infrastructure, training, and perceived major barriers faced in using web-based distance education technologies for delivering instruction in agriculture programs. The research design used in the study was classified as exploratory descriptive and correlational.

One of the objectives of this study was to determine the relationships among selected variables and agricultural teacher educators’ participation in web-based distance education. Therefore, in determining the strength of relationships, descriptors as recommended by Davis (1971), were used. According to Davis (1971) conventions for describing measures of association were the following; .70 or higher very strong association; .50 to .69 substantial association; .30 to .49 moderate association; .10 to .29 low association, .01 to .09 negligible association.

Two rules were set a priori. First, in order for the variable to have been considered for further analysis in the multiple regression procedure, the variable must have had a correlation value of .10 or greater. Second, the variable must have had a significant relationship with faculty participation in web-based distance education. In addition, all hypotheses were tested at alpha .05.

InstrumentationThe instrument used to collect data was a three-part questionnaire designed by Murphy and Dooley (2001) and modified by the researcher for this study. The instrument was four pages long and designed to be automatically scanned into a digital file by an optical character recognition (OCR) scanner. Part I of the questionnaire was designed to identify the selected personal and professional characteristics of the respondents and described their current level of involvement in the use of web-based distance education technology-mediated instruction. Seven questions were devoted to demographic and professional variables. The seven questions were gender, age, the number of courses the faculty member taught per year, the number of years the faculty member had been teaching, region (western, eastern, central, and southern), the tenure status of the faculty member (non-tenure track, non-tenure, and tenured), and their academic rank or title (assistant professor, associate professor, and professor). An additional 11 questions were used to describe the respondents’ current level of participation in web-based distance education technology.

Part II consisted of 32 statements designed to measure the level of competence of agricultural teacher educators have in the use of web-based technologies associated with distance education, perceived value or level of importance the technologies have or will have to the teaching of agriculture, and perceived availability of

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infrastructure related to the use of these technologies. Part III consisted of 13 statements designed to measure the perceived barriers which would inhibit agricultural teacher educators’ decision to participate in web-based distance education.

Content and face validity were established by a panel of experts. The revised instrument was pilot-tested with 18 faculty members from the Department of Human and Community Resource Development (Agricultural Communication) and the Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics at The Ohio State University. Internal consistency was evaluated with a Cronbach’s Alpha on each scale using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS v.10). Reliability scores ranged from .80 to .89.

Data Collection and AnalysisThe data collection process was conducted by mailing the instrument to the agricultural teacher educators during Spring Quarter 2002. The researcher had two months to collected the data.

The data collected was analyzed using SPSS v.10. Descriptive statistics were used to organize, describe, summarize, and simplify the data set using measures of central tendency such as means, medians, and modes (Warmbrod, 1993). In addition, Pearson-Product moment correlation coefficients (r), {Point Biserial correlation coefficients (rpb), and Spearman correlation coefficient (rs), and multiple R coefficients (R) from the regression analysis were used to summarize the magnitude and direction of the relationships between variables. Descriptors identified by Davis (1971) were used to describe the measures of association. The squared semi-partial multiple regression correlation coefficient (sR2) was calculated for each independent variable. This process was done in order to determine the proportion of the dependent variable that could be explained by each independent variable when the linear effects of the other independent variables have been removed from the independent variable being considered. The simultaneous model multiple regression was used to determine the significant independent variables that could best predict faculty participation in web-based distance education.

SUMMARY OF FINDINGSThe summary is organized around the research objectives of the study. The specific data and information follow the statement of the research objective.

Research Objective 1: Describe the selected personal and professional characteristics (age, gender, tenure status, and years of teaching experience, teaching load, academic rank, and region) of agricultural teacher educators (faculty).

A total of 85 agricultural teacher educators respondents

were the data source. The majority (77%) of the agricultural teacher educators were between the ages of 41 to 65 years. Ninety two percent (92%) were male while 8 percent were female. Moreover, the majority (82%) of the agricultural teacher educators was tenured faculty and had more than 16 years of teaching experience (76.2%). In addition, agricultural teacher educators taught a number of 1 to 7 courses per year (75%), and the majority (57%) has the academic rank of Professor. Most (39%) of the agricultural teacher educators were from the Southern region, 28% were from the Central region, 22% were from the Western regions, and 11% were from the Eastern region. Research Objective 2: Describe how many of the faculty had a website, how was it used, where the course website was located, software used, computer operating system used, and who created or maintained the website.

Sixty-one percent (61%) of the agricultural teacher educators had a website, the course website reside in the university server (24%) and is used as a course enhancement (34%). The 20% of the software used for website creation and management were a combination of HTML editor (e.g. FrontPage, Dream Weaver), Word processor/presentation packages, and course management (e.g. WebCt and Blackboard). The most common computer operating system used by agricultural teacher educators was WinNT/Win200 (44%), while 2% indicated a combination between, WinNT/Win2000 and Mac/OS. Furthermore, 33% of agricultural teacher educators pointed out that they were responsible for creating their own website, while 2% reported a combination between self and graduate/undergraduate student.

Research Objective 3: Describe training related to the use of web-based and videoconferencing technology to deliver distance education, where training on web-based and videoconferencing technologies were received, how many courses have been taught using web-based distance education by the agricultural teacher educators, and level of participation using web-based distance education technologies.

The majority (52%) of the agricultural teacher educators received training on the use of web-based technologies to deliver distance education, while 48% reported never have received training on the use of web-based technologies for delivering distance education. On the other hand, 61 % agricultural teacher educators reported no training in videoconferencing technologies, while 39% reported having received training. Moreover, 33% of the agriculture teacher educators received training on the use of web-based technologies by the Department of University Technology, and 27% were self-taught. Furthermore, 28% of the training on how to use videoconferencing technologies for delivering distance education were provided by the Department of University Technology, and

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26% were self-taught.Moreover, 21% of the agricultural teacher educators indicated they taught 2 to 4 times a course during a semester or quarter using web-based technologies (either totally or enhanced) for distance education, 20% indicated 5-10 times, 19% taught more than 10 times, and 26% never taught courses using web-based technologies. Furthermore, 74% of the agricultural teacher educators were currently participating or previously taught a course using web-based distance education, while 26% reported not participating.

Research Objective 4: Describe the perceived level of competence that agricultural teacher educators have in the use of web-based technologies. Twelve items on the questionnaire were used to measure the perceived level of competence that agricultural teacher educators possessed in the use of web-based technologies often associated with distance education. As an indication of competence, the agricultural teacher educators indicated that they were able to use many of the web-based teaching technologies. A notable exception was that 44% agricultural teacher educators indicated that they were uncomfortable creating their own WWW homepage. These results are consistent with studies done by Limin, 1997; Roopnarine-Maedke, 1989; and Ritchie and Hoffman, 1997.

On the other hand, agricultural teacher educators were much more confident in their ability to create, edit, incorporate and use digital images as well as creating their own presentation graphics. These results are consistent with studies done by Dooley and Murphy, 2001; Murphy and Dooley, 2001; and Lynch and Corry,1998. Furthermore, a clear majority (92%) of the agricultural teacher educators used e-mail for almost all of their correspondence, although 53% would not sent their most important or confidential documents through e-mail. These results are consistent with studies done by Murphy and Terry, 1995; Dooley and Murphy, 2001; Murphy and Dooley, 2001; Lynch and Corry, 1998; Green, 1996; Day, Raven & Newmart, 1996; Goldberg, 1997; Liao, 1998; and Nooriafshar, 1998.

In addition, more than half (78%) of the agricultural teacher educators declared they were familiar with the teaching methods appropriate for distance learning. These results are consistent with studies done by Schmidt and Faulkner (1989). A majority (59%) of the agricultural teacher educators could confidently deliver a course over the web and 53% could deliver a course using a course management system. These results are consistent with studies done by Murphy and Dooley (2001). Finally, the majority (86%) of the agricultural teacher educators concurred that they were able to connect a computer to the various output devices available (LCD projector, TV, etc.).

Research Objective 5: Describe agricultural teacher

educators perceptions of the level of importance that web-based technologies have or will have in teaching and learning.

Twelve items were used to measure value—that is—the importance of the role agricultural teacher educators believed web-based technologies have or will have for teaching agriculture. An overwhelming majority (97.7%) of the agricultural teacher educators concurred that the Internet/WWW are both convenient ways to access information. In addition, 78% of the agricultural teacher educators declared that participation in listservs, threaded discussion groups, chats and other electronic communications offers great benefits. Seventy-seven percent of the agricultural teacher educators stated that most course materials would be improved by incorporating multimedia. These results are consistent with studies done by Harris, 1992; Schumacher & Strickland, 1992; Liao, 1998; and Green, 1996.

Moreover, (78%) agricultural teacher educators affirmed that animated graphics increase student interest and (39%) retention. These results are consistent with studies done by Murphy and Dooley, 2001; and Nordheim and Connors,1997. The majority (81%) of the agricultural teacher educators concurred that students today prefer a more visual learning experience, and more than three-quarters (94%) of agricultural teacher educators responded that web-based technologies provide students with instantly available supplemental course and research materials. These results are consistent with studies done by Murphy and Dooley (2001).

Furthermore, 77% of the agricultural teacher educators have the same opinion regarding the importance of incorporating web-based technologies to the courses they teach. On the contrary, 61.2% share the opposite view that learning requires a face-to-face interaction. In addition, 82.4% of the agricultural teacher educators are not opposed to distance education. These results are consistent with studies done by Dooley and Murphy, 2001, Murphy and Dooley, 2001; Willis, Willis, Austin & Colon, 1995; Day, Raven & Newmart 1996; Goldberg, 1997; Liao, 1998; and Nooriafshar, 1998.

This study found that agricultural teacher educators considered the use of web-based technologies to enhance their teaching and to be useful and important. However, agriculture teacher educators’ opinions were mixed concerning the effect of web-based technologies. Although agriculture teacher educators clearly agree (37%) or strongly agree (32%) with the statement, “Web-based technologies and information will drastically alter how we teach in the next five years”, 45% did not support the statement, “Web-based technologies and information drastically alter what we teach in the next five years.” In general, agricultural teacher educators perceived that web-based technologies would continue to have a

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substantial impact on teaching, changing how teaching is conducted. However, a growing number of faculty members did not believe that web-based technologies would also change what we teach.

Research Objective 6: Determine the perceived availability of infrastructure for agricultural teacher educators to use web-based technologies.

Eight items were used to measure the perceived availability of infrastructure to determine the extent to which the campus environment supported the use of web-based technologically mediated instruction, both on and off-campus. In addition, four “yes/no” type questions were used to measure: (a) accessibility of the web from home and office; and (b) awareness of the office and personnel in charge of scheduling videoconferencing.

Concerning the availability of infrastructure, agricultural teacher educators (100%) indicated they were connected to electronic mail in their office, and 88% indicated they were connected at home. In addition, 78% of the agricultural teacher educators were aware of the on campus office for scheduling videoconferencing, and 77% were aware of the personnel responsible for scheduling videoconferencing. Furthermore, 81.2% of the agriculture teacher educators concurred that the equipment needed to produce multimedia course materials and (86%) the equipment needed to display multimedia is available to be used. In addition, 86% of the agricultural teacher educators pointed out that they have access to a classroom that is designed to support the use of multimedia teaching aids. Additionally, 72% of the agricultural teacher educators declared that there are many opportunities for faculty training on using multimedia equipment and 53% on videoconferencing. Moreover, 48% stated that there are enough faculty development workshops regarding videoconferencing, and 68% of the agriculture teacher educators agreed they were aware of the procedures on campus for scheduling videoconferencing. Furthermore, 68% of the agriculture teacher educators affirmed that they have access to technical assistance when teaching at a distance. These results are consistent with studies done by Willis (1993). In general, training, technical assistance in the use of web-based technologies and equipment are available for agricultural teacher educators to use. However, in Murphy and Terry, 1995; Dooley and Murphy, 2001, and Murphy and Dooley, 2001, the training and assistance in the use of instructional technologies were less available than equipment.

Research Objective 7: Describe what the agricultural teacher educators perceived as major barriers for participating in the use of web-based technologies for delivering distance instruction in agricultural settings.

Thirteen items were used to measure the perceived major

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barriers that agricultural teacher educators would consider that inhibit their decision to participate in web-based technologies (either totally or enhanced) for delivering distance education.

Agriculture teacher educators identified six major barriers that would inhibit their decision to participate in using web-based technologies to deliver distance education. Those barriers were: (1) the lack of administratively provided time, like professional development leave, to learn to use web-based technologies (56%); (2) the lack of rewards and incentives that encourage faculty to participate in web-based distance education (59%); (3) the lack of credit toward tenure and promotion (50%); (4) concern about workload (67%); (5) the lack of grants materials/expenses (funding) (51%); and, (6) concern about the effects of distance education technology on the quality of the courses (53%). These results are consistent with studies done by Shifflet, 1993; Fabry and Higgs, 1997; Jackson, 1993; Pajo and Wallace, 2001; Dillon, 1989; Murphy and Terry, 1998; Clark, 1993; Dillon & Walsh, 1992; Gilbert, 1996; Olcott & Wright, 1995; Sherry, 1995; and Verduin & Clark, 1991.

The identified barriers that would not inhibit agriculture educators decision to participate in using web-based technologies to deliver distance education were: (1) the lack of administratively provided time, (i.e. not leave) during the day to attend workshops (49%); (2) the lack of a technological background (50%); (3) the lack of facilities designed to utilize web-based technologies (48%); (4) the lack of institutional support (45%); (5) the lack of faculty training (45%); (6) the lack of technical support personnel provided by the institution (50%); and, (7) resistance to change (77%).

Research Objective 8: Explain the variance in the dependent variable, faculty participation in web-based distance education, through a linear combination of the independent variables.

For this investigation, a simultaneous multiple regression procedure was used to develop regression equations for predicting faculty participation in web-based distance education. The independent variables that were significantly related to faculty participation in web-based distance education were included in the analysis. The best predictors of faculty participation in web-based distance education were found to be level of competences/skills and lack of grant material/expenses (funding). Although the variable of infrastructure had significant correlations with faculty participation in web-based distance education, when this variable was entered to the equation, it did not significantly contribute to the prediction of faculty participation in web-based distance education.

The three independent variables that were included in the

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calculation of the semi-partial multiple regression coefficients accounted for 33% of the faculty participation in web-based distance education. The independent variable, level of competences/skills, uniquely accounted for 26% of the variance in faculty participation in web-based distance education when the effects of the other independent variables was removed. The t-test value was 5.60 and it was significant at p < .05. The independent variable, infrastructure, uniquely accounted for .06% of the variance in faculty participation in web-based distance education when the effect of the other independent variables were removed. The t-test value was -.283 and it was not significant at p < .05.

The independent variable, lack of grants materials/expenses (funding), uniquely accounted for 3.5% of the variance in faculty participation in web-based distance education, when the effects of the other independent variables were removed. The t-test value was –2.05 and it was significant at p < .05

Revised ModelFigure 1 shows the factors included in the exploratory regression model. The factors included in the model were those found to be significant correlated with faculty participation in web-based distance education. The asterisks in the model indicated those variables found with significant correlations to faculty participation.

Level of importance, training, and selected barriers such as: concerns about the quality of the course, concern about workload, the lack of credit toward tenure and promotion, and the lack of reward and incentives, were not correlated with faculty participation in web-based distance education and, therefore, were not included in the model. Although, the barrier the lack of administratively provided time, likes professional developmental leave, to learn web-based technologies was correlated with faculty participation in web-based distance education, the correlation was not significant, therefore was not included in the model. Finally, the factors included in the model were: level of competence, infrastructure, and the lack of grant materials/expenses (funding).

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Figure 1: Revised Model of the factors related to faculty participation in web-based distance education technologies* Significant at p < .05

*Level of Competence (r=.54)

Level of Importance (r=.06)

*Infrastructure (r=.18)

Faculty Participation in Web-based

Distance Education

technologiesBarriers

1. The lack of professional developmental leave (Time) (r= -.11).

2. The lack of reward and incentives (r= -

.07).

3. The lack of credit toward tenure and

promotion (r=-.08).

4. Concern about workload (r=-.09).

5.* The lack of grant material/expenses

(funding) (r= -.25)6. Concern about the quality of the courses (r=.03)

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RECOMMENDATIONSIt is recommended that:

1. The value of web-based technologies for learning, and the successful integration of technology into the student’s course depends not only on access and on availability, but also on how faculty embrace and use technology. It is important to understand that faculty plays an important role in the implementation of distance education and technological change. However, as indicated in this study, faculty participation in web-based distance education is influenced by level of competences/skills and the availability of funding. In order to increase faculty involvement in web-based distance education, several recommendations are offered: (1) provide faculty with an overview of web-distance education and information on how to become involved in agricultural distance education programs; (2) deans and department chairmen need to address and eliminate the inhibiting factors that deter faculty from participating in distance education and stress the benefits associated with web-based distance education.

2. Establish a distance education central office for agricultural programs to serve as a clearinghouse for information and projects regarding web-based distance education.

3. It is important to provide faculty with development programs focused on web-based distance education technologies, and with access to technical assistance when teaching at distance. In addition, the researcher agreed with Willis (1993) in recommending that it is necessary to provide faculty with answers to technical, administrative, and academic questions in a language which was understood by faculty. It is imperative that institutions establish a comprehensive faculty development program including incentives.

4. As Parisot (1997) stated, “Institutions need to address the barriers that impede the adoption and use of distance technologies by faculty and build policy that encourages openness to new teaching methods, as well as changes in a college’s organizational and administrative structure” (p. 12). The researcher recommends that administrative policies for tenure and promotion should be revised. In addition, to develop a new program of incentives and rewards for faculty that are currently participating in distance education. This will stimulate the non-participant.

5. Even though the agricultural teacher educators in this study reported having received training in web-based technologies, it is recommended that training be strategically planned and integrated within an entire institution. Training is an area where the administration can offer significant support for the faculty and the

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distance learning programs at their institution (Siantz & Pugh, 1994).

6. Institutions need to provide adequate support, ensuring reasonable workloads, and making it easier for staff to make the transition to the set of new technologies would assist in facilitating the rapid diffusion of web-based teaching initiatives.

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH1. Because of the exploratory nature of the multiple regression model, an investigation of the factors which would account for additional variance in faculty participation in web-based distance education needs to be undertaken.

2. Replication of the study with a larger sample of agricultural teacher educators might help to explain variance in faculty participation in web-based distance education.

3. Since 67% of the variance in faculty participation in web-based distance education is still unexplained, research should be conducted using level of involvement as a potential independent variable as well other selected variables.

4. Follow-up study should be designed to focus on the participation of agricultural teacher educators 45 year of age and older in distance education. The study can be focused in how these faculty members got involved in web-distance education, whether or not they are tenured, how often they published and identify possible barriers to continue participation in web-based distance education. 5. It is recommended that a study be conducted including administrators, agricultural college dean and department chairs to determine the level of support that faculty received from the institutional point of view and determine if that support is positive or negative in terms of motivating faculty participation in web-based distance education.

6. Finally, it is recommended for further study to replicate this study with a larger sample of agricultural teacher educators and using principal components analysis as a statistical data reduction procedure that identified how variables cluster. Then, the identified principal components can be use inserted into the regression model to explain and predict variance in the faculty participation in web-based distance education. The advantage of using this technique is that the compute principal component score reduce the number of independent variables (predictors) in multiple regression model (Stevens, 1992).

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LIST OF REFERENCES

Beaudoin, M. (1990). The instructor’s changing role in distance education. The American Journal of Distance Education, 4(2), 21-29.

Brooks, J. J. G. (1999). Identification of critical factors that impact the success of distance learning: A faculty perspective. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Indiana University.

Castillo, J. (1999). The level of job satisfaction among agricultural teacher educators. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Ohio State University.

Clark, T. (1993). Attitudes of higher education faculty toward distance education: A national survey. The American Journal of Distance Education, 7(2), 19-33

Davis, J. A. (1971). Elementary survey analysis. Englewood Cliffs; New York: Prentice-Hall.

Day, T. M., Raven, M. R., & Newman, M. E. (1997). The effects of world wide web instruction and traditional instruction and learning styles on achievement and changes in student attitudes in a technical writing in agricommunication course. Proceedings of 24th Annual National Agricultural Education Research Meeting, 167-175.

Dillon, C. (1989). Faculty rewards and instructional telecommunications: A view from the telecourse faculty. The American Journal of Distance Education, 3(2), 35-43.

Dillon, C. L., & Walsh, S. M. (1992). Faculty: The neglected resource in distance education. The American Journal of Distance Education, 6(3). 5-21.

Fabry, D. L., & Higgs, J. R. (1997). Barriers to the effective use of technology in education: Current status. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 17, 385-395.

Gilbert, S. W. (1996). Making the most of a slow revolution. Change, 28(2), 10-23.

Goldberg, M. W. (1997). Calos: First results from an experiment in computer-aided learning. Paper presented at the ACM’s 28th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. Retrieved February 8, 2002 from http://paedpsych.jk.uni-linz.ac.at/PAEDPSYCH/NETLEHRE/NETLEHRELITORD/Goldberg97.html/Goldberg97.html

Green, K. C. (1996). Campus computing 1995. Encino, CA: Campus Computing.

Green, K. C. (1996). The coming ubiquity of information technology. Change, 28(2), 24-31.

Greene, B. R., & Meek, A. (1997). Distance education in higher education institutions: Incidence, audiences, and plans to expand. Retrieved February 23, 2002 from U. S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics Web site: http://www.nces.ed.gov/pubs98/98132.html.

Harris, C. (1992). Landscaping with microcomputers. The Agricultural Education Magazine, 64(8), 5-7, 17.

Jackson, G. B. (1993). A conceptual model for planning and delivering distance education in agriculture. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Pennsylvania State University.

Jayaraman, V., & Piper, W. S. (1998). Delivering quality distance learning: Perceptions of business faculty and students. Decision Line, 29(2), 11-12.

Kayworth, T. R., & Koch, H. (1997). Distance learning education. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Decision Sciences Institute, San Diego, CA.

Liao, Y-K. C. (1998). Effects of hypermedia versus traditional instruction on students’ achievement: A meta-analysis. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 30(4), 341-359.

Limin, M. (1997). A study of computing education needs among college of education faculty. Unpublished doctoral

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dissertation, University of Tennessee.

Lynch, W., & Corry, M. (1998). Faculty recruitment, training, and compensation for distance education. (ERIC Document Reproduction Services No. ED421101)

Murphy, T., & Dooley, K. (2001). College of agriculture faculty perceptions of electronic technologies in teaching. Journal of Agricultural Education, 42(2), 1-10.

Murphy, T., & Dooley, K. (2001). A five-year longitudinal examination of faculty needs associated with agricultural distance education. Paper presented at the 28th Annual National Agricultural Education Research Conference. Retrieved February 8, 2002 from http://aaaeonline.ifas.ufl.edu/NAERC/2001/Papers/murphy1.pdf

Murphy, T. H., & Terry, R. (1995a). Faculty needs associated with agricultural distance education. Proceedings of the 22nd National Agricultural Education Research Meeting, 13-23.

Murphy, T. H., & Terry, R. (1995b). Opportunities and obstacles for distance education in agricultural education. Proceedings of the 22nd National Agricultural Education Research Meeting, 1-11.

Newcomb, L. H. (1992). Satellite television technology is ready for us; Are we ready for it? Downlink, 1(1), 2.

Newcomb, L. H. (1992). Transforming university programs of agricultural education. Paper presented at the American Association of Agricultural Educators Meeting, St. Louis, MO.

Nooriafshar, M. (1998). The effectiveness of a web-based interactive multimedia system in tertiary education. Proceedings of the 14th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning , 271-275.

Nordheim, G. J., & Connors, J. J. (1997). The perceptions and attitudes of northwest agriculture instructors towards the use of computers in agricultural education programs. Proceedings of 24th Annual National Agricultural Education Research Meeting , 320-329.

Olcott, D. J. (1991). Bridging the gap: Distance learning and academic policy. Continuing Higher Education Review, 55(1 & 2), 49-60.

Olcott, D. J., & Wright, S. J. (1995). An institutional support framework for increasing faculty participation in postsecondary distance education. The American Journal of Distance Education, 9(3), 5-17

Pajo , K., & Wallace, C. (2001). Barriers to the uptake of web-based technology by university teachers. Journal of Distance Education/Revue de l’enseignement à distance: 16, 1. Retrieved February 8, 2002 from http://cade.athabascau.ca/vol16.1/pajoetal.html.

Purdy, L. N., & Wright, S. J. (1992). Teaching in distance education: A faculty perspective. The American Journal of Distance Education, 6(3), 2-4.

Ritchie, D. C., & Hoffman, B. (1997). Incorporating instructional design principles with the world wide web. In B. H. Khan (Eds.), Web-based instruction (pp. 135-138). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.

Ritchie, D. C., & Hoffman, B. (1997). Tools, techniques and training: Helping university faculty put courses on-line. Proceeding of the Technology and Teacher Education Annual, 41-45.

Rockwell, S. K., Schauer, J., Fritz, S. M., & Marx, D. (1999, Winter). Incentives and obstacles influencing higher education faculty and administrators to teach via distance. Journal of Distance Education Administration, 2(4). Retrieved February 8, 2002 from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/rockwell24.html

Roopnarine-Maedke, P. (1989). A survey of faculty perceptions of computing education needs at Southern-Illinois University at Carbondale. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Carbondale.

Schmidt, B. J., & Faulkner, S. C. (1989). Staff development through distance education. Journal of Staff Development, 10(4), 2-7.

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Schumacher, L. G., & Strickland, R. M. (1992). Computer simulations adding a touch of realism. The Agricultural Education Magazine, 64(8), 8-9.

Sherry, L. (1996). Issues in distance education. International Journal of Distance Education, 1(4). Retrieved February 8, 2002 from http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~lsherry/pubs/issues.html - abstract, pp. 337-365

Shifflet, B., Richardson, L., Ghiasvand, F., Plecque, D., Verduzco, M., & Thomas, J. (1993). Computing needs among college educators. Computers in the Schools, 9, 107-117.

Verduin, J., & Clark, T. (1991). Distance education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Warmbrod, J. R. (1993). Applied multivariate statistical analysis. Unpublished manuscript. The Ohio State University, Columbus.

Willis, B. (Ed.). (1993). Enhancing faculty effectiveness in distance education. Distance education: A practical guide (pp. 227-251). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.

Willis, B., & Touchstone, A. J. L. (1996). A technological solution in search of an instructional problem. The Agricultural Education Magazine, 68(11), 4-5, 9, 12.

Willis, J., Willis, D. A., Austin, L., & Colon, B. (1995). Faculty perspectives on instructional technology: A national survey. In D. Willis, B. Robin, & J. Willis (Eds.), Technology and Teacher Education Annual 1995 (pp. 795-800). Charlottesville, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.

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TEACHING ONLINE IN HIGHER EDUCATION: AN ONLINE FACULTY WORKSHOP IN ONLINE PEDAGOGYDOUGLAS A. YOUNG, MADirector, Center for Distance LearningUniversity of Texas-Pan American

Web-based learning has moved very quickly from a being fringe activity, engaged in by only a few universities and colleges, to a mainstream effort at many (if not most) institutions of higher learning. World-wide, approximately twenty three million students were enrolled in distance learning courses in 2002, up from 710,000 in 1998. Fifteen percent of all higher education students are taking distance learning courses, up from 5 percent in 1998. (United State Distance Learning Association figures.) The growth has been all the more astounding considering the World Wide Web as we know it today has been in existence for only one decade.

But much of the growth has been accomplished by new and/or non-traditional schools such as Capella University, Nova-Southeastern University, and Walden University. In the case of state-owned schools, they have had to set up new and innovative ways to put courses online. The University of Texas TeleCampus, the Western Governor’s University, Rio Salado College (as part of the Maricopa County, Arizona, Community College System) and the Michigan Virtual University are examples. More traditional brick and mortar schools have been unable to adapt quickly, and few have more than a smattering of courses and programs.

Yet the demand for more courses grows. The primary audience for online learning has been the working adult student who often has family and employment obligations and cannot attend traditional classes. These students are highly motivated, and are willing to endure the difficulties of using unreliable technology for the convenience of getting their education on their schedule. In a few short years, we will see the demand grow again as the children of the digital era reach college age. These future students are already used to using the Internet in all facets of their lives – including education. They will expect the Internet to be a highly integrated part of their higher education experience.

Faced with the increasing demand for online courses, coupled with the fact that most traditional schools have not adopted web-based learning into the mainstream, the question must be asked: why aren’t traditional institutions producing and teaching large numbers of online courses?

There are many answers to the question, but one reason is clear. Faculty members have been reticent to adopt a method of teaching that is unfamiliar to them. Moving

from the traditional classroom to the online teaching environment is difficult for many faculty members because they have no model to follow in the new environment. They learned traditional college teaching techniques by exposure to their own professors during their own formal education.

In the mid to late 90’s, schools prepared their professors to instruct online by teaching them the software (known as course management systems) used for online courses. Campuses conducted faculty development workshops in WebCT, BlackBoard, Dream Weaver Course Builder, or other software. The result was a befuddled faculty who felt overwhelmed with the need to learn complicated software – something made all the more difficult by the other ever increasing demands of academe. Frustration increased because faculty discovered they still did not know how to teach online, even after mastering the software.

The traditional higher education teaching model uses the lecture method, with the addition of labs, assigned research papers, and various kinds of tests to evaluate learning. The obvious flaw in using the traditional method arises when faculty discover there is no “lecture” method online.

Initial attempts to teach on the web often resulted in faculty members putting copious notes and lecture material online - especially PowerPoint slides. In other words, they modeled the only web behavior they knew – they created web sites. But, education does not consist of having students read notes followed by a test. Learning takes place when students are engaged in the content in a meaningful way. Merely creating a web site is analogous to giving students a textbook to read during class, then asking them to return in sixteen weeks for a final test. Most learners don’t do well in that environment.

Another problem encountered by faculty new to web-based learning was the perceived need to answer all questions posed by students. Again, faculty experience was with email, so most modeled their normal email habits as the primary means of communication with students. For large classes, this meant the professor had no life other than being in front of a computer monitor. Often, he/she found herself answering the same question repeatedly.

For those who had explored the use of the discussion boards, there were additional problems. Because Web-

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based learning in higher education is asynchronous (meaning communication does not happen with everyone online at the same time), faculty sometimes found students had posed a question in a discussion topic, only to have the question answered by another student. Some faculty were alarmed that questions posed in the discussion areas were often answered by other students. They either feared other students might provide incorrect answers, or that their own role as subject matter experts would be diminished.

In other words – software training was not enough. In 1999, the Center for Distance Learning at the University of Texas-Pan American began the development of a workshop intended to train faculty in the pedagogy of online teaching and learning. It was decided it would be constructed on four principles:

1. Experiential Learning - In the belief that the best learning is experiential in nature, faculty would learn best how to teach online by being immersed in the online environment as students.

2. Interaction - Effective online learning happens only when courses are designed and taught with high levels of interaction. The faculty development workshop would be based on Dr. Michael Moore’s theory of the three levels of interaction, and the workshop would model that behavior.

3. Learning Styles - Faculty would learn best how to teach within their own academic discipline by creating effective instructional design documents based on their own teaching and learning style.

4. Learner Centered - The faculty should modify his/her teaching behavior by adopting a learner-centered approach, while maintaining overall control over the course and the content.

Additionally, in the belief that faculty members are experts in their discipline, it was decided the workshop would avoid trying to convert them into instructional designers. When at all possible, pedagogical jargon was to be dispensed with. Such phrases as “transactional distance” and “terminal performance objectives in the cognitive domain” would not be found in the workshop.

Likewise, in the full knowledge that faculty members are busy teaching, publishing, and doing committee work, it was felt they don’t have the time (nor usually the inclination) to become “computer jocks.” Such terms as “JavaScript” and “HTML tags” were not to be found in the workshop, unless an attendee were to bring up the topic.

Faculty members are, by definition, researchers and theorists. It was decided the workshop should be a careful balance between theory and practical application, with

only enough theory to support the practical application

PRINCIPLE #1 – IMMERSION

“No man’s knowledge can go beyond experience.” John LockeAs the design of the course began, it was decided early on that a mere tutorial would not accomplish the desired learning goals. It was deeply felt that faculty members would best learn the techniques of online learning by being fully engaged as online learners themselves. The traditional classroom environment is so fundamentally different from the online environment that no mere tutorial would suffice. The differences must be experienced to be learned.

While the designers felt strongly that faculty could learn best how to be effective instructors by being immersed as students, we found a disturbingly high number of faculty members with poor computer skills. While teaching the Introduction to WebCT workshop on campus, we had found many unable to perform basic file management tasks. We were afraid poor computer skills would doom the prospective online instructor from the start.

The design of the course was therefore intended to allow people time to “ramp up” the computers skills. Obviously, basic computer and Internet skills were needed, but no formal test of skills was given in order to avoid insulting anyone. Instead, prospective attendees are told they would need basic skills (how to use a browser, how to dial-up), but those skills would be expanded as the workshop progressed.

The desired learning outcome was to have faculty members familiar enough with the technical mechanics of learning online that they would be able to answer student questions when problems arose. This was deemed to be a particularly useful for those faculty members teaching at schools that do not have a “Help Desk” support activity for online learners.

PRINCIPLE #2 – INTERACTION

A lecture is a process where information is passed from the notebook of the lecturer to the notebook of the student without necessarily passing through the minds of either. Anonymous Educator’s Signature File.

Most people think of “interaction” in terms of communication, as exemplified by “If I’m talking to someone, I am interacting with them.” In education, we may expand that a bit, and think of “interaction” as “feedback.” One of the hoped for learning outcomes is that attendees will come to think of “interaction” as the essential ingredient of the learning process, rather than just the mere act of communicating.

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Dr. Michael Moore identified three types of interaction:• Instructor-Learner: The “interaction” most of us identify with education. It includes the instructor asking questions, students asking questions of the instructor, and normal conversation.

• Learner-Content: Moore states this is the essence of education as it is the interaction with content that produces the change in perspective or behavior that education seeks to promote. This interaction can be merely reading books, but can include testing, case studies, research papers, and other teaching strategies normally used in higher education.

• Learner-Learner: This is the least used of the three forms of interaction, but one that often offers the best learning experience, especially for adult learners.

(Moore, M. G. (1989). Three types of interaction. American Journal of Distance Education, 3 (2), 1-6)

The designers felt the workshop must emphatically emphasize the following concept:

The mere posting of content to a web site does not a web course make.An effective online course must include high levels of interaction.

For faculty to learn that concept, it was determined that the workshop must not only present and discuss the concepts of interaction, but (in keeping with the principle of immersion) must model that desired behavior.

PRINCIPLE #3 - LEARNING AND TEACHING STYLES

“One national study has revealed that only 35 percent of faculty strongly emphasize their institution’s curricular goals. Only 12 percent utilize feedback from their earlier students, and 8 percent use the viewpoints of experts in instruction. The conclusion: ‘The faculty interviewed seemed to teach as they had been taught ...” Lion F. Gardiner - “Why We Must Change: The Research Evidence”

The decision to create an online web-based faculty development workshop was predicated on the concept that faculty had no model for teaching online. When they did so, they tended to try to teach as they had been taught. As faculty members are accomplished learners, they may have succeeded in their academic careers because their learning styles matched the teaching style of their professors. Therefore, the workshop directs attendees to take a couple of online, interactive learning style surveys. Results are then discussed with other attendees in the hope that recognition of learning styles may lead to a modification of teaching styles.

PRINCIPLE #4 – LEARNER-CENTERED INSTRUCTION

This concept is often confused with allowing the students to study whatever they wish. Instead it means the professor continues to be the subject matter expert who puts much sweat and labor into a course to create a framework from which the student draws out that knowledge in the manner that best suites him/her. The business student taking a course in strategic management who is interested in e-commerce may find the content much more engaging if allowed to apply the new knowledge in doing research on Amazon.com rather than writing a paper on Heinz foods.

The instructor-centered model does not work well online, principally because it requires the professor to answer literally thousands of questions, rather than allowing students to discover relevant information. Stated differently, the professor would have no life if s/he answered every question. Upwards of 3,000 discussion postings are often generated during a semester. Imagine trying to respond to all postings. A preferable alternative is to have students develop their own answers in concert with input from other students and the content. Learners want structure, not being told how they must learn.

One of the most often heard phrases in online learning is that the professor must move from being “A Sage on the Stage to a Guide on the Side.” As with most clichés, it has a core of truth surrounded by a shell of hype. Merely telling faculty of this concept is bound to result in rebellion against the concept. Engaging them in a good model of learner-centered instruction gives them an opportunity to understand it from the student viewpoint - - and discuss the topic with other faculty members.

Once these basic principles were developed, various teaching strategies were devised.

Graded Interaction - If the essential element of online learning really is interaction, then all three types of interaction must be used and modeled. In the feeling that learner/learner interaction is an important part of a higher education course, it must be included and encouraged in the workshop. To encourage participation, each attendee is given two points for completing an assignment within the discussion board – then another point for replying to another attendee’s posting. Once attendees adapt to the technique, the point system is rendered useless as everyone joins in the discussions without prodding.

Peer Critiquing - Each attendee is asked to write a short written assignment about interaction, and then post it to the Student Presentation area. Formative evaluations indicate most attendees learn much from reading other attendee’s assignments.

Sense of Community – A common ground is found that enables all participants to identify with the class as a

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community. Such “bonding” increases learning.

Guest Speaker - There is nothing quite like having an”expert” join a class. During the final module, an experienced practitioner of web-based learning joins the workshop as a means of sharing “real world” experiences.Sliding Skills - As mentioned earlier, some attendees may enroll in the workshop with a minimum of computer and Internet skills. As the workshop progresses, additional skills are needed, such as file uploading, file renaming, and the downloading and installation of new software for video streaming. When those with poor skills need help, the more experienced members of the workshop are encouraged to assist. This also models the concept of building community.

PROGRAM EVALUATION

The workshop is a “work in progress.” Changes in technology, and an ongoing evaluation of the workshop itself, coupled with feedback from participants, have been used to constantly improve the workshop.

Some observations are interesting:

Drop out rates within the workshop vary drastically. In one session conducted over the 2000-2001 winter break, only one person out of fifteen successfully completed the workshop. In another session that concluded in May, 2001, fourteen of twenty six finished

Anecdotal information taken from emails and phone conversations from those who failed to finish the workshop points towards the following possibilities for the high drop out rate:

• In spite of warnings to the contrary, most faculty are not prepared for the amount of work the workshop entails. One theory, worthy of further research, indicates that there is a subconscious equation of “computer learning” with automation. In other words, if it’s on the computer, it must be easier. Obviously, even in this circumstance, if a faculty member has taken the workshop, and has dropped out, s/he has learned computer delivery does not equate to “automation”, and may be less willing to subject his/her own students to the demands of online learning.

• The flexibility of web-based learning may prove to be a curse as well as a blessing. “Anywhere, anytime” has its draw backs. If one can work on a course at any time, it is easy to place it at the de facto bottom of one’s priorities.

• Some faculty members are just felt overwhelmed by their own poor computer skills. We found that those with poor skills also operated older, less capable computers.

• There seems to be some correlation (though nothing indicates it is causal) between money and dropping out. In some instances, attendees were receiving a grant that required successful completion of a workshop, and in other cases, the institution was paying the cost of the workshop. Those groups had low drop out rates. In cases where faculty members were allowed to take the workshop for free, the drop out rate was quite high.

The workshop was created in to assist higher education faculty in being better online teachers. Obviously, the only question that needs answering is whether attendees are now, in fact, better teachers.

The answer: At this time, we don’t know. Institutions will have to apply various criteria to determine if the workshop has in fact, changed teaching behaviors. Such criteria might include comparing student drop-out rates between online and traditionally-taught courses, conducting student evaluations (meaning university students taking courses from workshop attendees) built around the concepts included in the workshop, and developing other comparative evaluation instruments.

The workshop has been in existence for three years, but little comparative data is available. Summative evaluations consisting of “smile sheets” have not been done as they do not measure any actual change in behaviors.

Anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that a great change in perceptions has occurred. But, any real evaluation of the effectiveness of the workshop program lies in the future.

One major addition to the program occurred in 2002, when a Spanish language version of the workshop began. It has been highly successful, with faculty members in Chile, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and the United States attending.

For current information about the workshop, including scheduled start dates, readers are invited to go on the web and go to cdl.panam.edu. The English language workshop is described in the Faculty Resources area, and the Spanish language workshop in the section labeled Centro de Aprendizaje a Distancia. Both workshops are open to faculty members from any institution of higher education.

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ROBERT S. BRAMUCCI, PH.D.Dean, Open Campus at Riverside Community College District

Over 30 years of research on the prevalence of cheating on examinations has determined that:

• Nearly all college students have witnessed cheating, • Over half have cheated, and • A significant minority cheats at nearly every opportunity.

These results are at odds with the perceptions and experiences of teachers, who believe cheating is rare and seldom catch anyone in the act.

Why the discrepancy? Perhaps we teachers suffer from errors in thinking. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel Prize for his work detailing human cognitive biases. In contrast to views of human problem solving as a rational process, he and colleague Amos Tversky showed that when confronted with complex situations, people often use simple “rules of thumb” based on memory and limited personal experience. One example of a cognitive bias is overconfidence: people tend to greatly overestimate the time it will take to solve a problem (or even their ability to solve it at all!). Another is the availability heuristic, whereby people tend to estimate probabilities by the number of similar cases they can recall along with the ease of that recall.

Teachers are not immune to such errors in thinking. It’s likely that overconfidence and availability biases lead most teachers to believe that if cheating was occurring in their classes, they’d detect it; and because they don’t detect it often in their classes, they conclude that their students cheat infrequently, if at all.

Do instructors fail to observe cheating because it is truly rare, or because casual observation is an unreliable method for detecting cheating? I once conducted an informal experiment: I provided ten different cheating strategies to each of five graduate students, who then cheated their way through a mock exam under the watchful eyes of experienced university faculty members. The professors knew the students were cheating, were tasked with identifying as many methods of cheating as they could observe, and were allowed to constantly circle the table at which the students were seated. Results showed that the faculty detected less than 25% of the cheating strategies even though they knew all the students were cheating! This result confirms the general conclusion reached in the literature on cheating---that observation is a notoriously

unreliable way to detect cheating. Still, however, we are so overconfident in our observational skills that the lack of observationally-detected cheating serves to assure us that the incidence of cheating is low.

Even if our powers of observation were to improve tremendously and we began detecting nearly all acts of cheating, new problems arise. Pursuing suspected cases of cheating can place onerous burdens on faculty. Granted, these burdens may be necessary to preserve due process, but in any case of suspected cheating a teacher’s time is diverted from instruction to write statements and testify at hearings. Lost productivity is compounded by the wearying flood of negative emotions attendant to the judicial review process: typically, the initial accusation leads to prolonged denials, introduction of strong evidence leads to a tearful breakdown, and the result is heartfelt begging…it can amount to a form of emotional warfare.

In one case, an exam proctor caught a student who had stuck an old test---completely covered in crib notes---under his exam. Despite the blatant nature of his offense, his unrelenting denials were fervent and he pursued a complaint all the way up to the university’s president. He lost his case in the end, but not before graduating to the role of stalker, following the instructor around town and popping up in heart-stopping fashion outside restaurants (even once in a dark parking lot). Faced with such consequences, what faculty member wouldn’t wonder if it was all worth it?

WHY WE FIGHTGiven the hassle, why not just throw up our hands, admit that some cheating is probably inevitable, and focus on the majority of students who don’t cheat? I’ll admit it’s tempting, but this cop-out ignores the important fact that cheating hurts students, professors, institutions, future employers and society:

• Cheaters hurt students who don’t cheat by placing them at a disadvantage in the competition for grades. After school, cheaters interview for the same jobs as non-cheaters, where the boost in grades conferred by cheating can translate into job offers and increased earnings. Cheaters literally “pick the pockets” of honest classmates.

• Cheaters hurt professors by undermining teachers’ quest to provide fair assessment of student strengths

A PROTOCOL TO PREVENT CHEATING ON EXAMINATIONS

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and weaknesses.

• Cheaters who under-perform on the job devalue the reputations of academic institutions and professional societies. Would you accept a neurosurgeon after learning he or she cheated their way through medical school? Or be proud that they’re an alumnus of your alma mater?

• Employers view academic degrees as proof that graduates have gained certain knowledge and skills; in the case of cheaters, this guarantee is fraudulent.

• Lastly, society also suffers if educational credentials aren’t valid. Unskilled doctors kill more patients; incompetent mechanics ruin cars, and so on.

Given strong social proscriptions against informing on colleagues (aka “snitching”, “being a rat”), we cannot realistically expect students to police each other. So, as unpleasant as it may be, protecting honest students from cheaters is rightfully the instructor’s job.

A ZEN KOANKoans are those maddeningly unanswerable questions posed in some Buddhist training, questions like “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Here’s a koan related to cheating: “When is a problem not a problem?”

The answer? “When it’s not a problem.”

Wait a second, you say, that’s not an answer at all---it’s just circular reasoning! But think of it this way: a great way to solve a problem is to prevent the problem from arising in the first place. Such a solution is actually preferred because it avoids the time, effort, and aggravation involved in solving the problem. Given the struggles described earlier, wouldn’t it be great if we could find a better strategy than detecting and punishing cheaters? Happily, we can---prevent cheating from occurring.

HOW TO PREVENT CHEATINGI’m going to describe a protocol to prevent cheating on exams. Don’t feel guilty if you don’t adopt the entire protocol; people and circumstances differ, so feel free to adopt portions piecemeal to fit your situation.

There are far too many ways to cheat on exams for me to describe them all here. For a discussion, see the “Halls of Justice” section of my web site at www.teachopolis.org. Likewise, there are many ways to categorize strategies aimed at preventing cheating. I’ll divide them into techniques that occur before the exam, at the beginning of the exam, during the exam, and after the exam. Let’s consider each in turn.

BEFORE THE EXAM• First, consider your philosophy of assessment. You might consider using alternative means of assessment that decrease the value of cheating: e.g.,

o open-book testing, o “legal cheat sheets”, or o publication of exam questions (for objective

tests, you could always disguise the real exam questions by releasing hundreds of additional questions)

• In polls, faculty and students tend to agree on what behaviors constitute cheating; agree, that is, except for areas like reusing old, freely-distributed questions from semester to semester. Instructors think that‘s cheating, students don’t (and I’m inclined to agree with them). Change your exam questions periodically. Consider switching textbooks and test banks frequently. In any case, if you use the same questions more than once, alter them or scramble the answer choices.

• Construct different versions of exams. Some computer programs make this easy, and even provide options for scrambling question order, answer order, or both.

• If you use different versions, don’t advertise it by printing the version name on the tests. I’ve even heard instructors brag that they use different-colored paper for different versions of a test. Nice of them to help cheaters identify which tests to target!

• If you don’t review completed exams in class and you want to get really sneaky, try “False Coding” exams. I take the first page of an exam and print several copies with the headings “FORM A”, “FORM B”, and so on at the top: this makes it look like I have four or five versions of the test. However, those aren’t the real versions. Instead, each real version is detected by some small detail that’s almost invisible---e.g., on the real version A the first question is labeled “1” while on the real version B the first question is labeled “1.” Did you catch the difference? (Hint: look for a period mark.) Then I alternate real versions A & B in the stack of tests I hand out to students. This subterfuge becomes even harder for cheaters to figure out because all fake and real versions of the test share the same first page (which actually serves an important statistical function---more on this later).

• Place a copy of your institution’s statute on cheating (these can usually be found in the student handbook) at the top of your test. You may also require students to sign a pledge attesting to their adherence to the statute.

• How often do you leave your office unlocked and unattended, even for a drink of water, a bathroom visit, or to ask a colleague a question? Secure your office!

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Don’t leave copies of exams, test banks, or test software lying around. Keep all test banks, tests in progress, old exams, and other test materials in locked cabinets. I’ve seen test banks placed in the “book giveaway” boxes outside instructor’s offices! Instructors may not realize that even though a textbook has changed to a new edition, many if not all of the questions from the test bank are reused in subsequent editions.

• Most faculty members use word processors to prepare exams, and many use computerized test banks. Is your computer protected? If not, secure it! Limit physical access to your computer, password protect the computer as well as all test files and programs, and consider encrypting sensitive files. If your computer is connected to the Internet, use an Internet firewall program to prevent intrusions.

• Some professors do a good job of protecting their office and computer, but then blithely drop off their exams for copying. Do you know who copies your exams and the protocol they follow? Do you know where your test and the copies made from it are every minute they’re out of your hands? Find out! Don’t leave your exam where someone could gain access to it even for a moment. Find out who makes the copies of your exams, meet with him/her and insist all materials be stored in a secure fashion before and after the copying (e.g., no leaving copies in your mailbox in the faculty mailroom).

• Know how many copies of your exam were made, reconcile this by counting the number of tests you receive, and number each exam (preferably using a pen with a unique ink color for each test).

• Provide your own colored scratch paper for the exam. Then use a paper cutter or hole punch to cut a simple design in the bottom of each page, or a unique rubber stamp to make a design on each page, thus foiling any student who attempts to use prewritten notes as “scratch” paper.

• Purchase unusually-colored pencils engraved with identifiable words or markings and insist that no other pencils be used during your exam (did you know that one major standardized test cheating scandal hinged upon pre-engraved pencils, sold for thousands of dollars each, that contained coded answers to the exam?)

• Just prior to an exam, use a paper cutter to cut a quarter inch or so of paper off the bottoms of all the tests. That way, any purloined copy of the exam will literally stick out!

• Before the exam, “walk the room” where the test will be administered. Look for writing on desk tops or backs, on bulletin boards and posters, on the blackboard, or on the floor. Look for “waste” papers on the floor or

wedged anywhere in the room.• If the classroom where the test is held is large and the desks are mobile, spread out the desks, leaving an aisle behind each row or couple of rows so that you and the other proctors can wander more freely. If your classroom is small, try to get a bigger room on test days. If the room is large but the desks are bolted to the floor, make students leave an empty desk between themselves and their neighbors.

• On test days, don’t let students decide where to sit. Instead, use a seating chart to stymie unauthorized prearranged collaboration.

AT THE BEGINNING OF THE EXAM“Ringers” are people who impersonate other students during tests. This tends to only be a problem in large classes. To combat this problem:

• Learn students’ names. If the class is large, use name badges or assign permanent seating to help you learn names.

• If classes are large, check picture IDs before exams. Be suspicious of any student who has no picture ID or who doesn’t know his/her identifying information.

• At the beginning of an exam, scan the room for unfamiliar faces. Ringers sometimes sit next to their accomplice rather than taking the test for them.

• Have students print and sign their names on the exam and/or answer sheet to facilitate comparison of signatures.

Here is a sample set of announcements to make at the beginning of the exam.

• The exam will begin in a few moments. When I begin to hand out test booklets, the exam is considered to have begun.

• You cannot talk to any other student once the test has begun. If you need to discuss an appointment or arrange transportation, do it now.

• There will be no leaving the room while your exam is in progress. If you need to go to the bathroom, go now.

• With the exceptions of questions about typographical errors or clarifications of ambiguous terms or questions, there will be no talking to me during the exam. To ask a question, you must leave your desk and come to my location. If you come up to ask me a question, stand so that you will not obstruct my view of the classroom.

• Notes pertaining to this academic discipline may not be in your possession or visible in your immediate area.

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You are not allowed to have visible notes of any size or shape on your person, in your calculator, cell phone or other electronic devices, with your personal effects or under your desk. If you are found to have visible notes, even if you are not using them, you will receive a grade of zero on this test; therefore, I suggest that you check your pockets, books, and other items now to ensure no notes are visible.

• Students wearing ball caps must now turn their caps’ bills around to the back and caps must remain reversed throughout the exam.

• No personal stereos, pagers, PDAs or other personal electronic devices may be used during the exam. No cell phone calls may be placed or taken during the exam.

• If asked to do so, you must display a picture ID card.

• If asked to do so, you must move to another seat as instructed. Being asked to move does not mean that we suspect or accuse you of cheating; rather, you may be asked to move to prevent someone else from cheating. • When you finish the exam, place your exam, answer sheet, scratch paper and pencil on your desk, gather your personal effects, bring your test materials and personal effects to the front of the room and turn in your test, answer sheet, scratch paper and pencil.

• After you turn in your test materials, you must leave the testing room immediately. If you are waiting for a colleague, you must wait outside this room. There will be no re-entry to the testing room.

• From this point, nothing is allowed on your desk except your exam, your answer sheet, my pencils and erasers, my scratch paper, and clear beverages in clear containers. No food or gum wrappers are allowed on your desk during the exam. No beverages are allowed except water or other clear beverages in clear containers. If you require a tissue, come get one of mine. If you break a pencil, spoil an answer sheet or need an eraser, come get a replacement from me.

• Put everything else underneath your desk now, including all pencils and pens, erasers, books and notes, tissues, food and drinks, and other items.

• Failure to follow the rules I have just outlined can result in a grade of zero on the exam as well as initiation of the university’s formal judicial processes.

• The examination has now begun. Good luck.

DURING THE EXAM• Use proctors.

• Train your proctors regarding common methods of

cheating (the most common is copying from another student, and the second most common is using crib notes).

• Train your proctors to recognize suspicious behaviors: e.g., wandering eyes, fidgeting with clothing, exaggerated gestures, off-task hand movements, unusual body postures, and visual scanning to determine the instructor’s and proctors’ locations. • Teach proctors to use covert hand signals to indicate the locations of suspected cheaters and the suspected offense.

• Instructor and proctors should remain vigilant during the exam. Do not grade papers, read books, or any other activity that hinders vigilance.

• Proctors should quietly wander during the exam instead of staying in one place; however, they shouldn’t circle the room in a predictable manner like a guard on his/her “rounds”. It is especially effective to be behind students because they never know where you’re looking; however, because students’ backs could obscure cheating, do not stand behind students all the time.

• If the class is large and impersonal, consider covert proctors who pretend to take the test but actually scan for cheating behaviors.

• Communicate with proctors via your predetermined silent codes to identify persons who exhibit suspicious behavior that warrants additional attention. Then have a proctor “hover” in this area to act as a deterrent.

• Here’s a tip that will have some students believe you can read minds: eyes move faster than heads, so if you’re scanning the room and your peripheral vision detects a student’s head jerking up to see where you are, move your eyes rather than your head. That way, you can always be staring at them by the time their head comes up. This is very unnerving to potential cheaters!

Typically, a trickle of people who finish their tests early becomes a flood midway through the exam. This stampede provides a distraction for cheaters. Therefore:

• Create a “check out” station near the door and make students line up in an orderly fashion along the wall next to the check-out station.

• “Log in” each student’s exam as he/she turns it in; that way, you know immediately if a test is missing.

• Ensure that at least one proctor remains uninvolved with the check-out process.

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• Place a “Is your test finished?” checklist at the end of the exam. The checklist should contain questions such as “Did you write your name on your exam, all answer sheets or booklets, and your scratch paper?” and give students a small amount of credit for completing it. Then bar any student from returning to an exam they’ve turned in to complete something they “forgot”. • If you’ve been pencil-coding the exam materials of suspected cheaters and students sitting near them, place these materials in a separate envelope.

AFTER THE EXAM • Scan answer sheets or blue books, looking for identical incorrect answers on two or more exams.

• To prevent students from falsely claiming that questions were misgraded, photocopy answer sheets or blue books before returning them.

• Mark blank pages in blue books so that material cannot be added and submitted for re-grading.

• Mark credit on problems using dashes (e.g., -6-) to make it more difficult to change credit values for answers (e.g., to a 16)

• Earlier, I advised using identical first pages for all versions of an exam. In addition to making different versions of the test harder to identify, you can also use this technique to punish and/or catch cheaters. Look for “runs” of correct answers; do they coincide with unchanged questions? I’ve actually had cheaters flunk themselves by getting all the questions on the first page right and nearly every other question (i.e., those changed across versions) wrong! I like this technique because cheaters punish themselves---no confrontation necessary. Since our focus is on preventing rather than detecting cheating, inform students you use this practice (without describing it in detail) so it acts as a deterrent. However, if I do decide to pursue a formal case, a statistical correlation between a student’s performance on changed vs. unchanged questions provides much

more powerful evidence of cheating than typical “I-saw-him-peeking” accusations.

• Perform cheating-detection statistics on suspected exams. Numerous statistical indices exist for detecting cheating: for a comparison of commercially-available software, see http://www.assess.com/Software/compprog.htm.

Despite the deterrent effect of all these precautions, it is likely that some students will still cheat. Here are some tips if you suspect someone of persistent attempts to cheat:

• It might make for gratifying teacher fantasies of justice and retribution, but do not snatch up the suspect’s test paper and do not confront them in front of the class. You may ask them to move to another seat, but allow them to finish the exam.

• Ask the student to speak with you after class. Don’t confront them then, either; instead, simply arrange a meeting between you, the student, and a colleague who serves as a witness (preferably your department chair).

• Immediately after the class, have all proctors who observed the cheating write an objective, fact-based account of their observations, keep a copy, and email their accounts to you. Instruct them not to discuss the matter with anyone else until it is resolved.

• Before you read your proctors’ reports, write your own account and send it to a trusted colleague.

• Collate all evidence and meet with your department chair, outlining the facts and requesting that he/she be present when the student is interviewed.

As for what happens beyond that point---well, that’s another article! Please note that this protocol isn’t complete and I add to it all the time, so if you’ve got a tip to add, email me at [email protected].

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STEPHEN DOWNESSenior Researcher, National Research Council of Canadahttp://www.downes.ca

COPYRIGHT, ETHICS AND THEFT

The relation between copyright and ethics is not nearly so clear as supposed. While it is easy to piously pronounce that people who copy online content are unethical and even evil, it is also wrong. The copyright debate is not a case of the morally right trying to maintain the defense against the morally wrong. It is a debate about what should even count as morally right or wrong.

PREAMBLE

A discussion has erupted on trdev (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/trdev/) discussion list, hosted on Yahoo! Groups, about the copying of members’ posts to another Yahoo! Groups discussion list. As one member wrote, “In other words, people are participating on lists, and then someone is taking their posts and putting it on the Training Ideas list without their permission. Then others are replying to these bogus messages, generating activity on the Training Ideas list.”

I posted a response to trdev to the effect that “this is pretty funny” and with the observation that “there was zero chance of getting away with it.” I also commented that “this is a (more or less) public bulletin board. When you write here, it’s like you’re tacking your missive to the office wall. Sometimes people will move your post, sometimes they’ll photocopy it (on the office photocopier with company paper). You’ve put your words ‘out there.’ They’re going to get circulated. If you didn’t want that to happen, then you should never have posted them on the open web.”

A number of people replied to my comments and to similar comments offered by Brad Jensen. The tenor of these comments varied but the message was uniform: not only was it inappropriate for someone to copy these posts to another list, it was probably illegal and most certainly ethically wrong. One person even wrote that it was evil.

ILLEGAL? ETHICALLY WRONG? EVIL?

1.

I have been working in the field of online learning for a long time. I have written volumes of materials concerning the design, pedagogy and technology behind online learning. I have even been paid for my work from time to time, paid enough that I have on occasion contemplated building a business based on my writing and thinking. And even though I am happily employed as a government researcher, my personal website remains my calling card,

establishing my credentials and expertise, acting as my personal forum, functioning as my online research lab.

Over the years I have seen most of what I have written appear, in one form or another, elsewhere on the web. Very often, entire texts were copied to other websites. More often, though, what I see are my concepts and ideas repeated elsewhere. Not just what I have printed in text, but features and attributes of software I have designed and shared over the net. Descriptions of the future of online learning. Designs for online learning modules (now called learning objects). Outlines of essential attributes for online communities. The learning object economy.

But even where the concepts are not explicitly attributed to me (and very frequently they are not), I do not consider this to be theft. For what I have done is to throw an idea or a concept out into the public commons, using a medium explicitly designed for that purpose. I expect it to be shared and, if it is a good idea, replicated throughout the online world. I have no problem with that.

What I have also seen, though, disturbs me a lot more. Many of the concepts and ideas that I and others have distributed through the open web have been appropriated by others as their own personal property. Scanning through the U.S. patent web page, for example, I see ideas that I have discussed in person or in print listed as patents granted to major corporations. Common terminology is registered as trademarks. And the concepts and ideas are codified as academic articles, granted copyright, and locked away as having been ‘discovered’ by the author in question (yours to view for only thirty dollars an item).

To me, this is theft. It comes in many guises, many forms. But it has in every incarnation the same appearance, the removal of something from the common domain and the making of that idea or concept the property of some person or corporation with the resources to defend it. It has become nearly impossible to simply share an idea on the open internet without it being stolen in this way. And (to judge from the list of patents) it seems that anything new that appears on the net is instantly seized upon by a horde of vultures determined to profit from someone else’s work. How did it come to this?

Now I can hear your response already. I could have protected my work, you say, had I merely copyrighted it, or as applicable, registered a trademark or filed a

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patent. Well, yes, I could, which is why today the Creative Commons logo is attached to all of my work. But this is only a reluctant admission that the system is deeply broken. And worse, it legitimizes all those copyrights and trademarks and patents. It allows these vultures to say that they have legitimately acquired that which they have stolen.

Copyright, from my perspective, is a haven for thieves. It is a license to claim ownership over anything you might happen to find on the internet (and elsewhere) that isn’t clearly nailed down. Worse, it is providing a means for those who enter this free and open space called the internet to put up fences and say “this is mine,” to appropriate a network designed for open exchange and to convert it to a private publication and distribution system.

2.

In the replies to my previous post, most writers staked the ethical high ground. “It is not pointless,” writes David Ferguson, “for members of a list to decry a practice that is technically illegal and certainly unethical.” Will Pearce expresses the hope “that we will choose to maintain the high level of ethics [and] integrity.” Robert Bacal wrote, “As an author and intellectual property creator, I’m just frickin fed up with rationalizations and defences of decrepit dishonest behavior.” And Christopher Tipton states it bluntly. “Plagiarism is thievery.”

I do not concede this ethical high ground so easily. I do not think it is so clear and obvious that the reuse of someone’s content is such a breach of morals. And leaving aside the question of what the law in fact says, I certainly do not think that such reuse should be illegal.

How can I say this, you ask? Well, would it bother anyone if I retrieved my stereo system from the burglar who broke into my house and took it? Would it be all right were I once again to drive my car after having recovered it from a thief? Obviously. Retrieving and reusing something that has been stolen from me is obviously something that is ethically permissible. And in just the same way, retrieving and reusing something that has been stolen from the public domain is something any person should have the right to do.

Where the error lies in the current interpretation and application of copyright law is in the presumption that the many multifarious works produced by the members of this and other lists, much less the applications filed for copyright, patent or trademark, are the original creation of the author. It is simply not so. Though original authorship is frequently claimed, it is seldom, if ever the case. Even the greatest work of prose stands, as they say, on the work of giants.

As I look through the various posts that comprise the digest

to which I now respond, I am witness to a large number of concepts, ideas, sentiments and even expressions that clearly have their origin in some prior source, an origin that is unattributed, an origin that the author does not even acknowledge exists. “Plagiarism is thievery,” writes Christopher Tipton. Well congratulations to Mr. Tipton for having come up with that original idea! Should I now respect his ownership of those words? His origination of that idea? Of course not. It would be absurd. And yet, according to the many writings of authors asserting that I must respect copyright, that is exactly what I must do.

3.

I recognize that the principle of copyright is not to protect an idea, but rather, the specific expression of that idea. That is why it is legal, say, to express in your own words the ideas that you may have found elsewhere. Thus, IMS (say) can create and copyright the idea of a “search application” without ever having acknowledged to having ever heard of a metadata repository before. That is how someone from MIT can blandly assert that the Open Courseware project was devised entirely by staff from that institution, without acknowledging any external influence or source for that idea.

But this line is blurring. With the advent of “business methods” patents in the United States, with the ever widening use of trademarks to appropriate common terms and abbreviations, the idea itself is increasingly becoming a type of property. The term Freenet, for example, was in wide use before it and the concept were trademarked, thus forcing an entire sphere of activity to call itself instead “community networking.” The term “blog” was around long before Blogger became a trademark, and now the method and manner of posting your thoughts to a website has become private property. “One click” - not just the words, but the practice - is now the property of Amazon, their ownership resting on the absurd premise that nobody thought of that principle before it was embedded in concrete by the U.S. patent office.

Let there be no mistake about this: when you place a copyright on your own work, then unless you are explicitly crediting external sources, you are claiming to have created every word, every idea, in your work by yourself. It I were to utter the phrase, “Plagiarism is thievery,” without crediting Mr. Tipton, he, by virtue of his copyright, may now claim that I have appropriated his idea. Should I reproduce an entire paragraph, he now claims he has unique ownership over that phrasing. Well I ask: does he know this? Can he prove that each sentence in his work is unique? Much less the ideas expressed therein? On what ground, therefore, does he claim copyright? On what ground must I recognize that this expression now belongs to him and him alone?

Moreover, even though copyright was intended to protect a

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particular expression of an idea, as any academic scanning for plagiarized student essays will attest, the mere rewording or rephrasing of content does not count as the creation of a new work. Students the world over have tried cutting and pasting sentences, introducing grammatical errors, replacing words, reordering sentences, and a host of other techniques, in order to circumvent plagiarism restrictions, and each of these has been rejected. Well, what now, of the ownership of a string of ideas in slightly different wording? Who can say who first came up with the idea that “Many of us benefit free of charge from the ideas, suggestions, and even the rants of some of the folks on this list.” Surely this is not original! The mere rephrasing of this concept does not make it the unique creation of the author.

In the creation of my daily newsletter, I read dozens of articles a day. I cannot count the number of purportedly original creations that do not lift, in whole or in part, concepts and ideas previously expressed elsewhere. Each one of these has a copyright label attached to it, as though it were some sort of unique contribution to society. If I read one more “original” explanation of XML I am tempted to scream! And then I see these articles cited as authorities, as though their authors contributed to the debate. I see the “Lego” analogy of learning objects attributed to David Wiley more times in a week than I can count, as though he came up with the idea.

Copyright may protect only the expression of an idea. But in virtually every article, every post, there is more than a little reuse even of the expressions of ideas, much less the ideas themselves. It’s not that I am saying that there is nothing original under the sun. But what I am saying is that there is far less that’s original than the supposed originators would like to claim. It is in my view blatantly dishonest to slap a copyright label onto anything you have written unless you are quite sure you have checked and verified the original statement of every idea in your work. For otherwise, your claim to copyright is nothing less than theft, and theft of the worst sort, for you did not even bother to acknowledge the existence of the person from whom you stole the idea.

4.

I stated above that copyright is used to protect thieves. Let me explain this a bit. The purpose of copyright is to control how the expression of some concept or idea is used. This is very clear, for example, in the terms and conditions of the trdev discussion group (and countless other forums where the same conditions are stated). Nobody is to copy, assert these terms, the posts in this group without the explicit permission of the author. Even the Creative Commons licenses contain this assumption. The idea is that the work cannot be used without adhering to the conditions stated in the license.

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The purpose of copyright, then, is to prevent others from using the material. Hence the use of the word “copy” in the term. It restricts the right to make copies of the work except under the terms and conditions outlined by the author. That is why I refer to the use of copyright as protection for theft. If I express an idea, and you take that expression (modified to disguised the original authorship), and place a copyright on it, then I can’t use that idea any more, at least, not without explicit attribution, and subject to your terms and conditions.

Now quite the opposite sort of thing happens when I copy your work without permission. Even granted that your work may be your original idea (an assumption which, recall, is generally dubious), I cannot be said to have stolen anything from you. You are still in possession of your original work. You are still able to use it, reproduce it, cite it, have it cited.

Of course, what you have lost is your ability to control my use of your work. You have lost the ability to force me to pay money for it. Or to force me to acknowledge you as the sole author and originator of the work. You have lost the ability to prevent me from reproducing the work in order to criticize it. You cannot stop me from creating a parody of the work. Or even from using it as evidence to show that your work is not, in fact, original.

Many people feel this as a real loss, and hence call the unauthorized copying of a given work a type of theft. But something is a theft only if you can show that I have taken from you something that you previously had. And while it may look, from the phrasing above, that I have indeed taken something you had, you never had any of those things to begin with. They are, at best, what might be called counterfactual properties. Under certain conditions, you might have had them. But you never did have them, and under most conditions, you never would have had them.

Consider, for example, your ability to charge me money for the work. This lies near the surface of the minds of most defenders of copyright. My copying of a work is frequently represented as a substitution for paying for the work. That is how the billions of dollars “lost” income is calculated by software publishers in their endless tirades against what they call piracy (another form of “theft”, but with an entirely fictitious element of force connoted by the expression). But this income is only lost if there is any circumstance in which I would have paid you. And there isn’t. Had I not copied it for free, I would not have copied it at all.

This is a clear example of how unauthorized copying is not theft. If you steal a CD from a store, not only has the copy not been paid for, the store has also lost the ability to charge anyone else for that CD. That is not the case here. It is as though I had taken the CD (which I would never

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have purchased) and yet left the copy of the CD in the store. The store has not lost any income, because a person who would pay for the CD could come into the store, pay money, and leave with the CD.

You may argue that I may send a copy of the CD to my friend, a fiend who, in other circumstances, would have purchased the CD. That may be true, but this example only shows the dangers of relying on counterfactual properties. For now I can argue, with equal plausibility, that my sharing of a copy of the CD prompted a person who would not have purchased the CD to now go to your store and buy one. And empirically, it appears that your sales actually increase if you allow people to copy the CD. And conversely, as happened with the shutting down of Napster, if you prohibit copying, then your sales decrease.

The ethics of copying cannot be established by pointing to financial loss, because there are many cases in which my copying can produce more gain than loss. It reduces the question of ethics to a financial calculation, which isn’t the point at all. And it is especially not the point when the material being distributed is being distributed for free, as on the trdev discussion list and most elsewhere on the internet.

5.

Your holding of a copyright over a certain work isn’t about money at all. It is about control. You want to control my use of what you have claimed to be your work. You want to control who I show it to, if anyone. You want to control my use of the expressions or ideas for the purposes of analysis or criticism. You want to force me to quote you accurately, to ensure that I do not quote your words out of context. When I copy your work without authorization, you have lost all of this.

But where we disagree is whether you had any of this in the first place. And where I deeply disagree is in your assertion that it is somehow unethical (much less something that should be a criminal offense) for me to disrupt your control over me. Quite the contrary: I allege that it is inherently dishonest, unethical, and should be illegal, for you to assert that you can control me in any of these ways.

Take, for example, the sharing of your work with my friend. This is a right I have always had. I could play your music at my party. I could pull your book off the shelf and show it to anyone I pleased. We would all gather around my radio and listen to the evening news. You couldn’t tell me who I could share this content with. Even if my friend was someone who was evil incarnate, you couldn’t prevent me from doing this. But online, the equivalent of showing somebody a page of printed text is to make a copy and send it by email or to post it to a discussion list. You don’t want me to do this because now other people might start

talking about your work, and making comments about your work. And you can’t stop them, you can’t respond to their comments, you can’t ensure that they are understanding what you said in the right way.

It is the epitome of a desire for control to assert that the discussion of a work must occur in only one forum. After all, isn’t that the major reason why posters to trdev do not want their material copied to another list? Because people on that other list - some of whom are disliked by the original authors - might conduct an illicit discussion of the work.

But of course people have never had the right to control the discourse of others. They have never had the right to prohibit the sharing of a piece of text for common dissection, criticism, and even misinterpretation (where would we be if Kant had got Hume right?). People have never had the right to prohibit parody and derivative works. It is only in the digital era, where every form of sharing amounts to a form of copying, that people have even begun to assume that they have, and can enforce, these rights. Now the Church of Scientology stifles internal and external dissent. Now Dow Chemicals (the current owners of Union Carbide) shuts down criticisms of their actions at Bhopal.

I do not accept anyone’s assertion that they have that much control over the use of their work. When I obtain some sort of content - whether it be by buying a CD, reading it on the office wall, borrowing a book from the library, or reading it on a discussion board, I do not under any circumstances give up the right to share the work with others, to comment, criticize, parody, misinterpret or do any of a hundred things the original author may find distasteful. No doubt Mr. Tipton would really prefer that I did not hold up his words as an example for all to see. But he never had the right to prevent this use, and that is the risk he took when he allowed me to view it in the first place. And it is a travesty of ethics to somehow suppose that he has not only a legal, but moral, right to control my expression in this way.

6.

There is a growing assumption on the part of software vendors and content producers to the effect that, when I access their content, I have or can in some way sign away my rights. This is the essence of what are called “shrink wrap” licenses, and the essence of the terms and conditions of the trdev discussion list, among others. The use of trdev is contingent on the “guidelines” and within those guidelines is the assertion that the deliberate violation of copyright will get a member banned.

The language used in the trdev guidelines is as fuzzy and dubious as the language used in many such shrink-wrap licenses. What counts as, for example, a violation

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of copyright? Are we all to be subject to U.S. copyright laws and therefore the loathsome DMCA? If someone alleges that copyright has not been violated, who makes that determination? If I maintain that copying posts to another list does not, in fact, constitute a breach of copyright, am I subject to any sort of hearing and appeals process? Does the rule of law even apply on trdev (or in similar environments), or is more along the lines of the stipulation, posted in jest, that you will be sanctioned for “saying the wrong thing when one of us coordinators is in a bad mood?”

And of course the purpose of this (and similar) statements of conditions is to assert that my use - my reading - of your content is subject strictly and solely to the list owners’ discretion. There is no law: what constitutes a law is created by, interpreted by, and enforced by the list owners. There are clear restrictions - some contained in the terms of service, some enunciated in passing by list owners’ posts - on what I can say and how I can say it. And if I want to offer a criticism that is beyond the bonds of what is allowed on this list, then I cannot take the discussion to another forum, for that, too, is prohibited by a wide and liberal reading of the copyright provisions.

Acceptance of the terms of service, therefore, is tantamount to my explicit recognition that I have no rights. It is an explicit abrogation of any of the freedoms I assumed I had when I conducted my affairs in the old world of print and oration. This, I am told, is the contract that I agreed to when I signed up to this (and other) lists, and for that matter, the sort of contract I agree to every time I buy a book, listen to a CD, or install some software. And the members of this list, in part, expect me not only to accept this elimination of my rights, they hold me to some sort of odd moral code in order to do so. Jack McCarty tells us that our violation of the terms of service is “evil.” How did this come about? How did my assertion of my own rights become evil?

In fact, no matter what U.S. and other legislators and courts may have to say, it remains not only ethical but even morally responsible to hold and to protect my freedoms, even in the face of products and services that seek to limit these rights. My reading of the posts on this or any other list does not, by virtue of some terms of service, limit my right to restate the points contained therein, to criticize them, or to discuss them in other manners not approved by the list owner.

It is morally and ethically wrong to allow copyright to be used to stifle the freedoms we enjoy, and morally reprehensible to use copyright in an effort to stifle someone else’s freedoms. But that, in the digital age, is what the application of copyright is all about.

7.

There is a response to my assertion that trdev is “a (more or less) public bulletin board.” Specifically, Will Pearce responds that “it’s not at all like a public bulletin board” in that “no one has the “right” to post anything he wants or do anything he wants with others’ postings--there’s not even a “right” to be a member, as the list owner can toss you off any time he or she chooses.” In various other posts are assertions that trdev is a private space, that the owners may therefore control a person’s conduct and enforce it as necessary.

I do not deny that the owners have the power to enforce their will. They could ban me from trdev (at least until I created a fictional identity). They could moderate my posts. That is why I said “more or less” (a qualifier that was conveniently ignored by all the critics).

But I maintain my assertion that trdev is a public forum. Part of my assertion rests on the practical. As Pearce himself stated, “anyone can join.” Only the most trivial and flimsy of barriers prevents me from reading the posts, a barrier so insignificant that it may as well not exist at all. The discussion board is hosted through a service on the world wide web, meaning that almost everybody with an internet connection already has the tools and means needed to access the list.

Saying that trdev (or any similar discussion board) is a private space is like saying that a poster on a wall facing a public street is a private space. Technically, it may be true, but the effect of posting a message in a place where it may be viewed by the entire world is tantamount to mounting it in a public place. You cannot place a message on a wall in public view and then claim that anything contained in the message can be read and discussed only under a set of rules and conditions established by the owner of the wall, not even if you post those rules and conditions in large text on the message itself.

There are many things a list like trdev could do to become a private space. For one thing, it could move itself from the world wide web to a much more private system. Groove, say, or even individual emails to a set of trusted friends. Many other discussions happen in this way and these discussions remain private. There is no illusion that they are public discussions because there is no chance of the public viewing them.

But of course, trdev and similar lists will not do that because nobody would join them. The advantage to a person posting on a list like trdev just is that it is a public space. Because it is so open to a large readership, posting on trdev ensures that their work will receive a large audience. Posting to trdev is just like posting a message to a wall facing a public street. The people who post to trdev take advantage of the fact that they are posting to a public

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place, and by their use of the internet and the web, are taking advantage of all the opportunities offered by the fact that it is a public place. But they do not want to give up the control that exists in a private place.

But it doesn’t work this way. You cannot put up bulletin boards with the notice that “anyone viewing this material must refrain from talking about it to others.” Anyone who tried would be laughed of the street. In the same way, a great many people on the world wide web are laughing at the idea that you can post something to a (more or less) public website and expect its contents to remain sacrosanct, the rules expressed by the author to be adhered to.

Again, this is not about me stealing your property. This is about you telling me what I can do, about you asserting your power. And even if you have the punitive weight of the moderator or the U.S. Supreme Court to back you up, the simple fact is that might does not make right and that my defense of my own liberties is at least ethically grounded as your attempt to abrogate them.

8.

My main point in this post has been to show that the relation between copyright and ethics is not nearly so clear as supposed. While it is easy to piously pronounce that people who copy online content are unethical and even evil, it is also wrong. The copyright debate is not a case of the morally right trying to maintain the defense against the morally wrong. It is a debate about what should even count as morally right or wrong.

In what I have written above, I have tried to show that the deployment of copyright has led to as much abuse and injustice as it has tried to prevent. I have tried to show that it legitimizes the theft of ideas and opinions from the common weal. I have tried to show that it incorrectly ascribes ownership to unoriginal content. I have tried to show that violating copyright is no sort of theft at all. I have tried to show how copyright is used to exercise power, to stifle criticism. I have tried to show that it is being used to stifle our freedoms. And I have tried to show that it is used in an effort to convert public spaces into private domains.

No doubt some people will read what I have written as some sort of endorsement of plagiarism. Or as some sort of advocacy of the idea that all content should be free. I am not making either point here.

There is something dishonest about taking some words or ideas and passing them off as your own. But we need to be clear about the ethics of this sort of misrepresentation. This is not some sort of theft from the original author of the idea, because the original author has not lost anything (indeed, they may be dead and by definition cannot have

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lost anything). No, plagiarism is a breach of trust between the plagiarizer and the reader of the plagiarized work. It is a misrepresentation of one’s self as something one is not.

A person who plagiarizes cannot be trusted. That is the beginning and the end of it. What he plagiarizer said (or inferred) is true, is not. It certain circumstances, such as affidavits and financial reporting, laws and sanctions are required to enforce honesty. In other cases, such as academic misrepresentation, lesser sanctions are imposed. But in general our reaction to instances of dishonesty is a community-wide condemnation of the individual in question. No further penalty is applied because no further penalty is needed.

Nor am I saying that all content should be free. Nothing in what I have said implies that no person should ever sell content. My objection to the design and use of copyright isn’t based on the idea that people should not sell content, it is based on my objection to the manner in which the sale of very similar (and sometimes more original) content is prohibited, and in its use to impose illegitimate terms and conditions on the sale of content.

Indeed, many business models involving the sale of content are possible even in cases where copyright is not imposed. As companies such as Red Hat have shown, it is possible to sell content you don’t even own. Moreover, the distribution of content at low cost or for nothing is often seen as a means of establishing credentials and landing contracts for service (that’s why those many private consultants on trdev are so willing to give their stuff away). Content can be sold if it is offered in a more convenient format, if it is distributed to a more convenient time and place.

The purpose of copyright is merely to establish a monopoly over certain kinds of content, a monopoly over some piece of software, some piece of music or art, some piece of writing. The purpose of copyright is therefore, in all cases in which it is applied, to prohibit the sale of content. But just as in other areas of endeavor we have learned that a monopoly is not the only viable business model, so also with regard to the sale of content monopoly is once again not necessarily the only viable model.

9.

I would like to conclude by considering one more objection. This objection is essentially the assertion that unless creative content is protected by copyright, people will not produce original content.

As Gary Lear wrote, “What will happen if we allowed people to take other’s words and do what they wanted is that people who have great ideas will cease to share. Conversations will stagnate, and those who are not creative will not be able to generate any new ideas. Those who are creative will also end up cutting themselves off

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from those who might stimulate their very creativity.”

Quite the opposite is the case. The more restrictive a copyright regime one works under, the less likely you are to share your own ideas, and even more to the point, the less likely you are to seek out and use the ideas of others.

The former is the case because, if you share your ideas, you leave yourself open to the possibility that someone may appropriate the essence of those ideas, or use those ideas as a starting point, to develop and control a product or idea you could have developed in time. You are therefore risking being cut off from the fruits of your own labour.

IBM, for example, has a patent application, filed on December 12 (United States Patent Application 20020188607), of a system “for providing multi-user electronic calendaring and scheduling functions.” What it essentially involves is the use of a system very similar to a learning object repository to provide access to live events in just the way you would provide access to learning objects. Now this is an idea I have talked about in my papers and presentations for the last twelve months. Did IBM get its idea from me? Who can know. Should I have kept my big mouth shut? Probably.

The fact that IBM can, by dint of its lawyers and financial strength, appropriate and say that it invented an idea which is, on the face of it, obvious, tells me that any discourse of anything genuinely new in the public sphere is inherently dangerous. It forces me to rethink whether I should post anything on the internet at all. Certainly, if I had run to the patent office instead of writing papers and sharing ideas, then I - and not IBM - would own that idea.

The latter is also the case. This is clearest in the area of music publishing, where recording artists are very clear about their refusal to listen to song proposals. Were they to listen to the song, then they leave themselves open to the allegation that they stole the song in question, or at the very least, were influenced. Thus we get cases like the suit against George Harrison who, it was held, copied his song “My Sweet Lord” from the Chiffons’s hit, “He’s So Fine.” It is a wise (but creatively stifled) musician who does not listen to any music at all!

10.

People forget that the periods of true innovation and creativity through history were those periods when copyright and the ownership of ideas was at its minimum, and that long periods of stagnation occurred when arts and crafts were the exclusive domain of restricted castes or guilds.

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Certainly, legislators in the United States realized this in the 1800s when they refused to enforce Charles Dickens’s copyright. This, of course, was at a time when London and Paris were the cultural centers of the world and Los Angeles was a backwater. Even at the relatively late date of 1928, it was permissible for a then young Walt Disney to copy not only the appearance, but even the music, from Steamboat Bill (released that same year) to create what would become his icon, Mickey Mouse.When people like Plato can copy freely and build upon the work of people like Socrates, creativity and new ideas flourish. But when the copying and creation of new work is rigidly controlled, as in the middle ages, creativity and innovation is stifled.

The suggestion that people will not create new products, content or services if they are not protected by copyright is a myth. Nobody owns the rights to apple pies, but I can buy them in any store in the world. The patent does not exist that would prevent me from cooking my own hamburger, but McDonalds is one of the largest hamburger vendors today.

Nobody is being paid through royalties or other protections for their work on Apache (the world’s most popular web server), Linux, Perl or Free-BSD. Nobody is paying the hundreds of thousands of individual weblog or website authors. Nobody paid me to create “Stephen’s Guide to the Logical Fallacies,” “The Future of Online Learning,” or this very post. But I did it anyways.

As Mark Pilgrim writes, people create because they can’t not create. They are motivated not by some external reward but through some sense of internal satisfaction.

It is, indeed, only when this process of creation by people with a genuine need to create is corrupted by the needs and prohibitions of commercialized, royalty-driven commerce that we see lurches and interruptions in the steady stream of creativity provided by people around the world. Only when we see creativity motivated by the dollar rather than the joy do we see a needless proliferation of copies and knock-offs. If there were no need to sell a thousand copies, would we really see a magazine print a half-rate description of XML rather than referring readers to better written and more authoritative accounts already available on the web?

If the objectives of those who defend copyright were really to stimulate creativity rather than monopoly and control, they would throw off the fetters of intellectual property legislation and embrace the opportunities a genuinely free market of ideas would provide. But they are not willing to do so. And so, we all lose.

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NewsTrolls References on Copyright and Patents (http://www.newstrolls.com/cgi_bin/website/find.cgi?category=1024240807)- more than 300 items

Stephen’s Web References on Copyright and Patents from an educational point of view (http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/website/find.cgi?category=1020644166) 255 items.

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Recinto Universitario de MayagüezDepartamento de Ciencias SocialesEdificio Chardón 217Phone: (787)832-4040 ext 3645Email: [email protected]://ceci.uprm.edu

Revista del Centro de Enseñanza Complementada por Internet


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