{"id":4264,"date":"2014-08-22T10:16:28","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T16:16:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/?p=4264"},"modified":"2014-09-12T11:57:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T17:57:00","slug":"course-design-is-scholarly-work-and-deserves-attribution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/2014\/08\/22\/course-design-is-scholarly-work-and-deserves-attribution\/","title":{"rendered":"Course Design is Scholarly Work and Deserves Attribution"},"content":{"rendered":"Approximate Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

My course websites used to be public, but I got tired of others taking my design work w\/o permission or attribution. Now most of my courses are password protected. \"examples\"<\/a> I hadn’t really thought about my syllabi until last year when I designed and taught a particularly novel course. It’s a gamified design and\u00a0is largely\u00a0a culmination of my own 35 years of experience in teaching as well as\u00a0the kind of design that Charles Reigeluth<\/span><\/a>\u00a0talks about when he talks about a paradigm change in education<\/a>. I started thinking about my syllabi and the course designs they describe as scholarly work\u00a0worthy of attribution. I have a growing number of publications that come from the novel aspects of the design of this course. I was annoyed when I discovered that the person who taught the course after me took many aspects of my design without any mention of where they came from. I have long included attributions on my syllabi and assignment specifications to credit those whose ideas I built upon. Apparently, this is not common, and that’s wrong. It’s especially<\/strong> <\/em>annoying when faculty in Education fail to acknowledge the colleagues and scholars upon whose work they are building, yet I’ve seen that done more times than I can count. I’ve had elements of my own designs “borrowed” without either permission or attribution. You’d think that professors of education\u00a0of all people<\/strong><\/em> should recognize that course design is scholarly work. These are the same people who insist on proper reference style on almost everything their students submit, claiming that proper attribution is an important part of ethical professional practice. Apparently, ethical professional practice only applies to *some* people and *some* scholarly work. \"getting-a-degree\"Once again, it’s reassuring to know that I’m not the only one who thinks this is an issue: Citing Syllabi \u2013 ProfHacker – Blogs – The Chronicle of Higher Education<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I think<\/span>Derek Bruff<\/a>\u00a0puts it very well in a comment on George\u2019s posting: \u201cThe acknowledgement issue is a delicate one. We have standard ways to acknowledge the research and scholarship done by others (citations and such), but we don\u2019t have any standards or norms around attribution of teaching materials or methodologies. I kind of wish we did, since giving credit where credit is due (a) is generally an ethical thing to do and (b) might result in better institutional recognition of contributions to the teaching profession.\u201d A similar discussion is found in the comments to Brian\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>post on Forking your Syllabus<\/a>. Katherine D. Harris has discussed the issue of\u00a0<\/span>Acknowledgments on Syllabi<\/a>\u00a0in a nice posting which also highlights the many different ways we can learn from these pedagogical gold nuggets. As she points out, with examples, a growing number of online syllabi do include an acknowledgements section. I will be adding some to my own courses as I revise and create new ones this year.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here are a few of Konrad Lawson<\/a>‘s suggestions:<\/p>\n

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