Stolen education

October 28, 2008 7:07 AM

I recently found out that one of my professors takes practically all of his lecture material straight off the web. Should anything be done?

At what point does using reference material for lectures become plagarism?

I've taken a few courses with this one professor I have, and when I attend these lectures I always feel like my time is being wasted. I never really figured out why until I realized that practically all of this person's notes, assignments, are direct copies from web-sources.

For example, one set of slides comes from exact copies of a few different Wikipedia pages (with only minor formatting changes), an assignment I'm working on now comes from a professor's website at University of North Carolina, and some notes on the course directory I'm reading to study for an exam right now comes from a professor's website at Ramapo College of New Jersey.

I wouldn't feel so disgusted if this material was merely supplementary, or if what was used were graphics, charts, tables, etc. What I'm finding, however, is that I can just take whole sentences from his notes, throw them into google, and find out they've been plagarized... but is it plagarism if the materials themselves are in the public domain?

The professor is a computer science professor, so understandably a lot of this information is "standardized", based on logic, redundant, etc etc... One might argue that there is less room for creative maneuvering, but does that change the situation? Isn't it somehow amoral that this person doesn't write any of these materials themself (especially the ASSIGNMENTS, which are fairly elaborate)? At the very least coming up with fresh examples? It's still fraudulent to present someone else's examples as your own, isn't it, especially when you're getting paid a salary to construct educational programming, and that programming is created by a few Google searches?

I am of the position that knowledge should be free, information should be promoted and shared and all that, but that doesn't equate to education being Google search mosaics.

I get good grades in this person's classes, and this person is very friendly, but then I place value on the learning process itself, and in that regard I feel like I'm being taught by Phillip M. Parker.

What would you do?

posted by anonymous to education (50 comments total)

but is it plagarism if the materials themselves are in the public domain

Just on this one point: something being in the public domain doesn't stop it being plagiarism. It only stops it being copyright infringement.
posted by game warden to the events rhino at 7:11 AM on October 28, 2008 [2 favorites]

You should ask the dean of the college what they think.
posted by dunkadunc at 7:14 AM on October 28, 2008

I would write an anonymous letter to the dean.
posted by desjardins at 7:14 AM on October 28, 2008

To add on to what game warden said, I would also add that a professor merely putting their notes online does not also make them "public domain" and the items are still copyrighted.

I would speak to an academic superior, perhaps the Dean of your school. There's no reason you should be paying thousands in tuition money to someone who is doing google searches on the topic and handing you the results as curriculum and I wouldn't stand for it. As you mentioned, supporting documentation is one thing but lifting full assignments, notes, slides, and readings to build an entire curriculum off the backs of other colleagues in Academia is something that should be flagged for sure.
posted by genial at 7:16 AM on October 28, 2008 [3 favorites]

Yes absolutely something should be done. The question however should be what should be done about it, and more importantly how it should be done. You are paying an awful lot of money to participate and to take lectures from knowledgeable academics in your field of study. I appreciate it is computer science but it appears your professor is being lazy.
posted by numberstation at 7:17 AM on October 28, 2008

At what point does using reference material for lectures become plagarism?

Never. Lectures are not scholarly research.

It's still fraudulent to present someone else's examples as your own, isn't it

No. It's good pedagogy to present someone else's effective example instead of your own bad example.

especially when you're getting paid a salary to construct educational programming

But professors aren't.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:18 AM on October 28, 2008 [20 favorites]

Fair Use tends to be interpreted as covering academic uses. I dont see a problem here and trying to get this guy in trouble seems uncalled for.

What would you do?

Be glad I have a teacher who just isnt blindly following a badly written textbook.

Welcome to college.
posted by damn dirty ape at 7:18 AM on October 28, 2008 [5 favorites]

If he is misrepresenting others' work as his own, then somebody should be informed, either the professor himself or one of his superiors. But computer science assignments and examples? To me that falls under the programming tenet of "don't not reinvent the wheel".
posted by and hosted from Uranus at 7:21 AM on October 28, 2008

your professor doesn't merely have the job duties of an instructor. he isn't just supposed to teach you what you came to learn but also to introduce you to knowledge/approaches/thoughts you didn't originally set out to be educated in. college is in part about stumbling upon others and information. I would have less of a problem with this person sourcing from the web than others on its own as the information has to come from somewhere if the way he put it together made a difference. taking information A from one web source, combining it with information B from a different open source and coming to an independent conclusion is valid. showing you a process to get to a result (how do I do xyz ... well, you go to a, try b, etc.) is cool, too.

what is an issue on the other hand is if he is pretending this is all the product of his own and exclusive work. he would be defrauding you in that case because of not just the ego aspect but also because he was withholding potentially worthwhile sources you could consider in the future.
posted by krautland at 7:22 AM on October 28, 2008

Err not not.
posted by and hosted from Uranus at 7:22 AM on October 28, 2008

You may find that some of these notes actually come from a textbook, but that it just so happened another school decided to post them on the internet. Textbook companies will regularly release powerpoints and notes to go along with their books to make the lives of professors easier. CS professors do this for the sake of their students because sometimes they simply can't translate their thoughts into understandable words. I'm sure you've had your share of CS professors that just sucked at teaching. Some ideas aren't so easy to translate into words, especially some of the basic ideas behind algorithms and programming concepts. Taking sources is one thing, but presenting it in a manner that students can understand is something that not all professors share.

You also have to consider that he might have asked permission to use these notes. While it's true that one should cite notes, you also have to keep in mind the Wikipedia IS a public encyclopedia.

If he's the friendly type, you should ask the professor directly. Typically, proffs don't mind sharing their thoughts on their notes.
posted by nikkorizz at 7:23 AM on October 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

but is it plagarism if the materials themselves are in the public domain?

Yes, it can be, if he's not citing the source of the information.

It's important not to confuse copyright infringement with plagiarism. They're two separate issues. Copyright infringement is copying, publicly performing, or creating a derivative work from copyrighted material, without the copyright holder's permission, and where fair use does not apply.

Plagiarism is presenting someone else's work as your own, not providing a proper citation.

It is not possible to infringe copyright on a work in the public domain, because no copyright exists. It is very possible to plagiarize work in the public domain.

(Also, I think you are misusing the term "public domain." It does not mean anything publicly available for free. Wikipedia articles, for example, are not in the public domain—they are copyrighted and released under the Gnu Free Documentation License (GFDL). If the professor is not releasing the Wikipedia-based slides under the GFDL, he may also be in violation of the copyright on those pages, but that's orthogonal to the question of whether he's plagiarizing them.)

If I reproduce the Sermon on the Mount from the King James Bible and claim it as my own original work, I am plagiarizing, but not infringing copyright. If I reprint The Stand in its entirety, including "By Stephen King" on the title page, I am infringing copyright but not plagiarizing.

Sorry, I'm not really answering your larger question here, but I wanted to clarify the difference between copyright infringement and plagiarism.

On preview in response to damn dirty ape: Fair Use is a defense against copyright infringement, not plagiarism.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:24 AM on October 28, 2008 [4 favorites]

Think carefully about how you want to address this. Some suggestions:

(1) Find out whether there is a University Ombudsman at your school. This is an independent resource whose job is to listen to what you have to say, and figure out the best approach to take.

(2) If your school doesn't have an ombudsman, identify someone sympathetic that you can talk to. Do not write an anonymous letter, and do not make any sort of public allegation until you have consulted with someone who knows the system and the policies there. Do you have a good relationship with any other professors at the school - ones you can trust to keep this matter confidential? Is there some kind of office of academic advising for students?

(3) Document your complaint, if you can. Identify specific instances of your professor using secondhand material.

(4) Try to find out whether your university has a policy on this - it might be in a faculty handbook or faculty guidelines. Your case is much stronger if you can point to a specific policy that is being violated.

Remember: while you and I may think this is lazy and irresponsible, your professor may not actually be violating any policies at your school, so you need to find out as much as you can before you make an allegation of any kind.
posted by googly at 7:24 AM on October 28, 2008 [2 favorites]

It was my experience while in college that professors would routinely borrow lecture material from other professors in their field.

What would you do?

Nothing, unless I thought he had chosen poor lecture material.
posted by HiddenInput at 7:30 AM on October 28, 2008 [2 favorites]

As a professor there is a temptation to use a really good example, illustration or animation from the web. Another thing I have found is that there are entire powerpoint presentations on the same topic to be found on the web. I tend to avoid the temptation and use what's available sparingly or indirectly.
I'm not sure how to put this advice, but be careful. You will find sometimes administrations rally around their faculty. You may be considered the villain and have a professor mad at you.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 7:34 AM on October 28, 2008

The real killer here isn't that the professor has cribbed some notes off the Internet, it's that he's teaching poorly. Lifting examples and exercises from online sources, textbooks, etc is a gray area, although there should be proper citation to avoid charges of plagiarism. But if the professor is wasting your time by faking education by just reading crap he found online, that's a real problem.

But you should think carefully about whether you want to make a public complaint. The professor you charge with plagiarism isn't the only problem, you're going to walk right into the petty rivalries that exist in your department and your school. If you do make a complaint I strongly suggest you do it anonymously.
posted by Nelson at 7:35 AM on October 28, 2008

Is it possible your professor wrote the Wikipedia entry on this subject? Or worked with the professors whose lectures he is using?
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:36 AM on October 28, 2008 [5 favorites]

The dividing line for me would be: Is he crediting others? Is he citing his sources? If he just rips his materials from elsewhere and says, "Look what I, ME, did!", then at the very least it's bad form for an academic. If he says, "This came from Jim James at School X", then maybe he's just lazy, but it's no harm.

I'm not sure if this against policy, but perhaps a meeting with the Dean could sort it out. I'm sure it could be done Anon, as well.
posted by GilloD at 7:37 AM on October 28, 2008

It was my experience while in college that professors would routinely borrow lecture material from other professors in their field.

This is the case. Lecture material, problem sets, exams, paper assignments, what have you. If it works, use it.

Y'all seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that the professor is presenting lectures to you as his own work. This is not the case. There is no claim in a standard classroom lecture that anything is the professor's "own work." There is only the claim that the material, whatever its ultimate origin, is useful to know in mastering the subject matter of the course. Classroom lectures simply are not scholarly product.

For example, it is completely normal to present the result of someone else's research in a lecture context with no citation at all -- "We understand that many other factors end up influencing vote choice through party identification; this is the "funnel of causality," with no citation to The American Voter because citing Campbell Converse Miller and Stokes is not a useful way to spend deeply limited class time.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:42 AM on October 28, 2008 [19 favorites]

I've taken classes from professors who were "writing their own textbooks" and most of them were bad. You're probably better off if he's chosen good source material and explains it well.
posted by beerbajay at 7:45 AM on October 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

This has "it depends" written all over it. If this was some harried adjunct prof working as a side gig for a low-level class with ridiculously cheap tuition, that's one thing. If this is a tenured professional teaching a high-level class at champagne prices, that's another.

It sounds like he's poorly integrated his various "source materials," and that leads to a somewhat schizo feel for the class, which may be why you feel your time is being wasted.

You are not there to learn at the feet of the master, who might smite you with his wooden katana should you dare to lift your eyes. You, along with a group of others, have engaged a professional to meet at a specified time and place to educate you. You've even paid for the space. If you think he's wasting your time, the school should probably no. And if you have a probable explanation, it's worth passing on.
posted by adipocere at 7:48 AM on October 28, 2008

Is there any reason for you to suspect that he hasn't received prior authorized permission from the sources/authors to use their material?
posted by watercarrier at 7:53 AM on October 28, 2008

Is there any reason for you to suspect that he hasn't received prior authorized permission from the sources/authors to use their material?

If he had, that would only mean that it wasn't copyright infringement. It might still be plagiarism.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:57 AM on October 28, 2008

Do you have evaluations at the end of the class? Because if so, then be sure to add this in there.

Also, schools don't keep people around when students don't want to take a class with them AND they don't know their stuff. So if this guy isn't an expert in the field enough to overcome people not wanting to take the class...

But remember that a lot of times students will want to take a class with a slack ass professor because it's an easy grade. I'm doing that right now actually, although she really does know her stuff so it's not exactly the same as your situation.

Here's the deal. Are you learning the stuff to a level where you'll be able to use it when you get out of school? If so, then there's really nothing to complain about. Professors (and all teachers for that matter) are paid to teach you the material, not to make up a new way of explaining it. And with some things, there really isn't a better way of explaining it.
posted by theichibun at 7:59 AM on October 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

If I was in your class, I would feel let down as well. Generally, we like to think that our professors spend a disproportionate amount attending to our intellectual needs by writing brilliant notes, assignments, lectures, textbooks, multi-media presentations, etc. This isn't really what most professors are rewarded for doing, however. Their "job" as it relates to teaching is to present you with content and assess your understanding of it as that understanding relates to a specific set of "outcomes". How they do that is by-and-large left up to them as long as they are doing so according to university guidelines, and generally isn't what they get recognized or promoted for doing.

Even though your professor probably isn't that interested in teaching (and there isn't much you can do about that), he is exercising awfully bad pedagogy. Really, every teacher takes assignments, ideas, notes from others. My department even has a database filled with them - that is a good thing because all of these relate to our course outcomes, and sometimes you just need a good idea. If you do take the ideas of others, you really should incorporate it into your own work product (i.e. your own course design, assignment sequences, classroom activities/lectures, etc.), otherwise you look foolish to your students who may not know everything you know, but can tell when you have planned poorly, and unprofessional to your peers. If you simply take some else's lecture notes or copyrighted work product (i.e. an individual or corporations) and use them without permission, that is increasingly against many university's policies with respect to academic fair use and copyright infringement. Still, this is not always enforced, and unlikely to result in anything except a "hey don't do that." Unless he is getting the University sued.

Think about what googly said, do *not* go to a Dean - that just shows a lack of understanding of how the academic grievance process works. If you have an Ombudsman, they will listen to you *and* be on your side, though they may not say what you want to hear. If you talk to the professor, if he is the approachable sort, don't confront him. Instead ask him about how he puts the course together, where he draws his ideas from, how he selects readings. Your goal here is to collect information and understand. If you still have a problem, you can talk to the department chair (if no Ombbudsman) and say, this is going on, it doesn't serve me as a student that well, it seems unfair to the people that worked hard to create these materials, and it would be nice to hear some of what the professor actually thinks or says because he seems like a smart guy. If your University has a stated policy about anything germane (and you should figure this out) then mention it. Don't talk about your money being wasted, you don't know how many students complain without an ounce of rhetorical sense about how to actually be heard. You sound like you might be different.
posted by mrmojoflying at 8:01 AM on October 28, 2008

Might, devilsadvocate, being the operative word. Till the guy is proven guilty - maybe the pitchforks and the nooses are a tad premature.
posted by watercarrier at 8:05 AM on October 28, 2008

To the OP - it's up to you - what to do. But if you want to assess this accurately - you will have to have some PROOF that what he is doing is wrong. You'd have to go to each of the sources on the web and find out if the material is copyrighted or otherwise falls under the laws of Intellectual property.
Then you'd need to contact the original authors of the material and alert them of possible infringement. If you have SOLID evidence that would pinpoint to this person using intellectual property without permission of the authors - then you could possibly take it to their bosses.

I still firmly believe you should give the guy the benefit of the doubt that no harm was done or intended and not jump to any hasty conclusions which could jeopardize his livelihood, not to mention tarnish his reputation.
posted by watercarrier at 8:14 AM on October 28, 2008

The professors for whom I've worked as a T.A. have often presented the work or course matierals of others, but they have always cited the sources. I would recommend talking to an ombudsman, the head of the department, or another faculty member about it. I definitely wouldn't want to make any sort of strong allegation- you definitely don't want to get pulled into any sort of academic policital quagmire. Best case scenario, your prof gets a talking to about not citing sources and starts to put a little more effort into teaching the course.
posted by emd3737 at 8:15 AM on October 28, 2008

"Stolen education"???? I don't understand the moral outrage here. If you value the learning process so much, then spend less time googling your professor's notes and more time actually learning.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 8:18 AM on October 28, 2008 [2 favorites]

"Also, schools don't keep people around when students don't want to take a class with them AND they don't know their stuff. So if this guy isn't an expert in the field enough to overcome people not wanting to take the class..."

You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that research universities (which is what this situation sounds like) view undergraduate education as their foremost priority. It rarely is.

The prof sounds like a poor lecturer. That may not be what his tenure decision is based on, but the OP has every right to have a problem with that. The sourcing of lecture material doesn't seem like an issue on its own, but in this case, it seems like another example of a superficial approach to his responsibilities as a lecturer.
posted by Good Brain at 8:36 AM on October 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

I've just recently left college administration to go into a different field, and in my position, dealt with these kinds of course concerns, with students and profs, all the time. Googly has it exactly. The ombudsman is elected to work with any staff, student, faculty person in an anonymous and extremely detailed way. He/she will take detailed notes, any material you have about your concern, and ask lots of questions. You'll be provided (without having to search for it yourself) with copies of all the pertinent policies and processes, and if you'd like, have them and the culture in which they have been applied, explained to you. The ombudsman may also start an informal inquiry by asking questions of the department head, deans, or other students, all anonymously, and sometimes, to protect the fact that it is an inquiry, he/she will sometimes create a simple cover story like "assessing student satisfaction in this department."

After all this info is in, you will both decide together, with all the facts, about what to do. Your options will range from nothing all the way to going public--with options in the middle that try to accomplish a change with revealing who you are or officially punishing who you're concerned about. It's a checks and balances process, and folks who go through it typically learn a lot about academia in general.

If your institution does not have an elected ombudsman, they likely have someone elected to fulfill the roll ad hoc. Check with the Student Services/Development center. An dean or assistant dean of students will point you in the right direction.

This is the best way to get a result that helps everyone--you just don't really know who "deserves" a dressing down until you've worked through a genuine process. There is no way for any of us to know the relevant facts and culture pieces of this situation and dole out a course of action (for example, those saying that this prof has every right to do this know nothing about the department policy for lecture materials--those who think it's deplorable have no idea of the culture of your institution at various college levels, and so on); work from inside with a person appointed to address these sorts of checks and balances.
posted by rumposinc at 8:53 AM on October 28, 2008

The professors for whom I've worked as a T.A. have often presented the work or course matierals of others, but they have always cited the sources

I have never seen anyone do this in an undergraduate lecture, except where the professor for whatever reason thinks it's important that the students connect a particular concept with a name. That is, if you think it's important that students be able to identify one theory of divided government as Mayhew's and another as Fiorina's, you identify them as such. Otherwise, it's just "Here are two takes on divided government."

I've certainly never seen anyone, ever, say "Before I begin this lecture, I should note that it is heavily derived from the lecture notes of a class I TA'd for in 1987 taught by Professor Hubert Farnsworth" or "This example comes from that most esteemed Professor Fotheringay-Phipps of Arkham University." These are not important information for students to know.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:53 AM on October 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

I don't think there's a legal issue with pulling material off the web. Write it down in your evaluation. These actually get read by the professors and the school. Unfortunately, it sounds like you're in a bad class. There's not much you can do about it. Believe it or not, from the school's perspective the professor is at the school more to burnish their careers and therefore the school's reputation than to be a good teacher. Boring classes are challenging in their own way... Think of it as preparing you for your future job :-)
posted by xammerboy at 8:59 AM on October 28, 2008

Plagiarism is the act of claiming somebody else's work as your own. If your professor isn't lifting stuff from the Web and handing it to you with "by me" written on it, he's not committing plagiarism. Your apparent assumption that your professor is supposed to write all the material presented in his classes, or rigorously identify the source of every piece of information he gets from elsewhere, is not justified.

So, don't moan to the dean about plagiarism.

If you want to moan to the dean about ineffective teaching, that's something else entirely and you're quite within your rights to do that. To cover your own arse, though, you should make sure that it really is the teaching that's ineffective, and not your own approach to learning. How does the rest of your CS class feel about learning from this prof? Do you feel that the prof just marking easy, or are the good grades you're getting actually reflecting your mastery of the subject matter?

Skip a class or two. If you suddenly start feeling like you're falling behind, give the prof credit for making this stuff look easier to learn than it is.
posted by flabdablet at 9:00 AM on October 28, 2008 [2 favorites]

I can hardly think of anything which is more celebrated in the abstract and more despised and punished in almost every particular instance than becoming a whistleblower.

Don't do this. If you do, it will become the focus of the rest of your career at this school. If your role in making an accusation of plagiarism becomes known, whether or not it turns out to be justified, you will become a pariah.
posted by jamjam at 9:37 AM on October 28, 2008

I'm going to join the chorus of folks telling to you leave this alone. Unless you wrote the materials you're claiming your prof has 'plagiarized,' then you just don't have any standing to bring the copyright claim that others here have already removed from plausibility. If you must complain, then do so in the recommendations, but I'd be very careful about approaching an Ombudsman in person with this. Even though rumposinc offers a great description of what the Ombudsman does, my own guess (as someone who's spent a good deal of time in academia) is that your complaint really doesn't rise to the level of concern that you might ordinarily think. It's the Ombudsman's role to evaluate student complaints, and I'm just not sure that your complaint, as articulated above, will merit the sort of attention you'd ask for.

In short, ROU_Xenophobe raises the critical point: professors aren't paid to design educational programming. They're primarily paid to design, conduct, and publish research, and any teaching they do often ends up being secondary to their research. We can argue all day about whether this is proper or not, but it is the state of secondary education. All your prof needs is some sort of plausible reason for him to do what he's doing, and a plausible reason will most likely cover him from any wrongdoing, absent specific and particular language to the contrary articulated in your college/university's policy and/or his contract.


posted by deejay jaydee at 9:49 AM on October 28, 2008

I'm in a different field and I teach extremely introductory stuff, but... do you realize that we educators actually have networks in place to share what we write? We go out of our way, even to the extent of having conferences and email lists and webpages and books to share assignments and teaching strategies with each other. If I have a really awesome lab that teaches topic X in creative way that works for most of my students and I put it on the web in a publicly accessible space, that's because I hope it helps someone else learn topic X. It's my contribution to the community.

So what is the role of your professor if all this stuff is out in the public domain?

The way I see it, my job is to find the best explanatory sources (which can be textbooks or webpages or other), and then talk about it with you to make sure you understand it, and then assess you to make sure you understand it, and then vouch for you to the university that you know what you say you know. I'm trying to get you up to speed so that you can either use the knowledge or add to the knowledge - whatever your plans are.

I'm not entirely sure why you think your professor should be reinventing the wheel. Even if he's just presenting the websites without extra interpretation, the fact that he chose *this* particular website is a form of interpretation. Instead of googling phrases from the homework, why not google the topic? See if he's whittled it down for you.

That's not to say your professor is blameless - he may be lazy, or failing at the interpretation/explanation step, or just trying to punt you on a homework assignment so he has more time to work on the things that *actually* count to gaining tenure - but it's to say that as you've presented it here, I'm not entirely sure that it's as bad as you see it.

P.S.: There are schools that reward teaching instead of research. Try finding a four year school with no grad school - those generally, not always, are more realistic about the commitment to undergrads.
posted by arabelladragon at 10:07 AM on October 28, 2008 [9 favorites]

"This is not the case. There is no claim in a standard classroom lecture that anything is the professor's "own work." There is only the claim that the material, whatever its ultimate origin, is useful to know in mastering the subject matter of the course. Classroom lectures simply are not scholarly product."

My best prof ever did, presenting large chunks of his research on Oakeshott and Oakeshott's work on Hobbes' Leviathan as part of a theory class. Likewise, I had a prof whose 20th Century Politics class was largely built around her upcoming presentation of a paper on the political rhetoric of Islamic extremism.

But both of those profs were head-and-shoulders above most of the other instructors I had.

Depending upon the relationship of the OP to his or her prof, I might address it with the prof themselves, just as a question about methods and sources. I've never had a prof who was at all recalcitrant about their sources.

(I will also say that when I had a prof who did this for a psych class that I had to take, I noticed that the tests were all drawn from a source that was on the web—with answers. Since the tests were open book/open note, I just printed out the tests ahead of time and used them. Because I had taken a very similar class at community college, but the credit didn't transfer, I had asked the prof to be allowed to test out of the class during the first week, and he refused, so I didn't feel bad about breezing through and spending my mental energy on other, more interesting classes.)
posted by klangklangston at 10:07 AM on October 28, 2008

Many of the answers in this thread are seemingly written in ignorance of the common practice of sharing teaching materials, or in profound confusion about the meaning of "plagiarism." Once more, teaching materials are usually not assumed to be presented as original work, and it's often a very good pedagogical decision to use a borrowed example, exercise, or idea, if it's one that works for students. It's nice to give attribution, especially in presenting big or seemingly very original ideas, but (as has already been said) class time is a finite resource and this needs to be balanced with many other teaching priorities; it's often more important to get students to understand the idea itself than to remember its source, since (especially at the undergrad level) students are being introduced to a discipline's basic ideas and methods, not being socialized into the current research of the field like grad students are (where attribution for recent research, of course, is more important).

This professor may be a bit lazy, and perhaps even on a morally dicey footing, simply in the sheer scale of the borrowing he's been doing in constructing the course, but this is not something I can conclude with certainty based on the description – since the framework of the course, the intellectual trajectory into which the borrowed exercises fit, may be a completely original creation or at a minimum an original interpretation of a standard course. I hope the poster and the other contributors here will read ROU_Xenophobe's excellent answers and disregard unfounded allegations that sharing teaching materials is plagiarism or is otherwise obviously punishable. (And please consider the trustworthiness of the posters of some of these reflections on academic honesty carefully.)

Here is an article on syllabus-copying from the Chronicle of Higher Ed (link may require subscription), where the author complains about and feels affronted by another professor's use of her syllabus but concludes that, icky though she understandably finds the copying, no policy really prohibits it.
posted by RogerB at 10:10 AM on October 28, 2008 [3 favorites]

I wanted to nth an earlier mention that textbook companies do sometimes release extensive materials -- whole PowerPoint presentations, sample quizzes and test questions, lecture notes -- specifically for college professors to use. I did contract work for McGraw-Hill creating dozens of these presentations and quizzes for several software programming textbooks. You may be feeling shortchanged that you could have gleaned this information yourself by Googling extensively for it, but there's nothing inherently illegal about his utilizing online content in preparing lecture notes and study materials for you and your fellow students.
posted by lgandme0717 at 10:15 AM on October 28, 2008

Many universities give an assessment form at the end of the course. If yours does this, be prepared. Type up your notes and hand them in with the assessment. Your courses are expensive. You deserve effective education, and you state that the courses are not effective. It's generally considered poor form to use someone else's work without permission and attribution. If he has been given permission to use the work and attributes it to the creator of the work, but is still a crappy teacher, then let the dept. know.
posted by theora55 at 10:29 AM on October 28, 2008

Does this differ among fields? For me this has been, while I wouldn't say 'the norm', very common. Often enough it's self-citing as I'll just download or get handed a packet of notes or a paper with someone else's name on it, but I've rarely seen citations explicitly done in this context. I can't imagine these RAGE responses to complain to the dean or the ombudsman as getting anything but laughed at.

Now if the professor is being lazy, teaching ineffectively or compromising the class like with "I noticed that the tests were all drawn from a source that was on the web—with answers. Since the tests were open book/open note, I just printed out the tests ahead of time and used them," that's another problem, but teaching effectively doesn't require writing your own notes.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 11:01 AM on October 28, 2008

I'm just stepping in here to say listen to ROU_Xenophobe and RogerB. If the guy is a bad teacher, then he's a bad teacher but that has nothing to do with using material written by others.
posted by ob at 11:02 AM on October 28, 2008

What is your goal here?

Is it to have the professor cite his sources for material? If so, you can do so in a non-confrontational way by asking him to post his sources so that you can follow the links for further reading.

Is it to get a professor fired? That's very unlikely to happen. Teachers and professors share and 'borrow' lecture material all the time. If this prof wasn't cribbing from the net, he'd be cribbing from a textbook. In either case, it would be unusual (and probably paralyzing to any in-class discussion) to cite sources for every example and problem (i.e., "the following example of friction in a classical system comes from the 1983 Physics Today textbook by ...")

Is it to make the professor come up with his own examples? That is also very unlikely to happen. It's the mark of an exceptionally good professor, but not a requirement.
posted by zippy at 11:30 AM on October 28, 2008

i.e. e.g.
posted by zippy at 11:31 AM on October 28, 2008

I wanted to nth an earlier mention that textbook companies do sometimes release extensive materials -- whole PowerPoint presentations, sample quizzes and test questions, lecture notes -- specifically for college professors to use. I did contract work for McGraw-Hill creating dozens of these presentations and quizzes for several software programming textbooks. You may be feeling shortchanged that you could have gleaned this information yourself by Googling extensively for it, but there's nothing inherently illegal about his utilizing online content in preparing lecture notes and study materials for you and your fellow students.

Yup. I'm a TA that's been actively encouraged by my department to use notes from textbook websites (called, appropriately, "Teaching Notes") for my lectures, in addition to tests, quizzes, assignments, etc. This might not always be the soundest pedagogical strategy, but in light of the fact that many of the instructors know close to nothing about the subject before teaching it, it helps bring up the quality of these classes overall. Would the students be better served by having professors who know what they're talking about? Sure. But the problem here is the system, not the methods used by the individual teaching the class.

And I really hate plagiarism! But I never, ever claim that the notes are in any way substantially "mine"--it's not my research, my writing, or even my knowledge. Really, listen to ROU_Xenophobe. There's no reason for you to feel particularly betrayed, except perhaps by "the system."
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 12:30 PM on October 28, 2008

Here's my take on this, which is along the lines of ROU_Xenophobe and RogerB:

Isn't it somehow amoral that this person doesn't write any of these materials themself (especially the ASSIGNMENTS, which are fairly elaborate)? At the very least coming up with fresh examples?

Look, suppose the professor were using a textbook, and drew all the examples and problems from just that one textbook. Though this would probably strike you as "moral" or whatever, I would argue that this is actually the same kind of pedagogical decision, but in many cases worse for the student than what you're experiencing. Here at least they are most likely picking and choosing from a range of examples and problems, and selecting the ones they think are the best or the most pedagogically useful.

That said, I have always been sure to get permission before using other people's materials, or in some cases, restructure the problem/example/information so that it is my own in some sense. But oftentimes permission has amounted to being given a complete set of course materials. I would consider it something I should try to do, to make the person who gave me those materials a similar gift at some time in the future, if I can -- that is the real moral obligation (though obligation may be too strong) involved. But all of this is happening behind the scenes for you -- you have no idea if this professor has gotten permission or whatever. And it doesn't actually matter for the educational experience.

The questions you need to ask are, (i) are you learning the materials, and (ii) how well. If you aren't or you feel like you could be learning them better, than this is something to talk about on the course evaluation. But realistically, the professor having to write all of their own examples, problems, and materials from scratch is not going to be the thing that actually improves your learning experience. The professor being only allowed to pick them from textbooks also probably won't be that great either (unless they are teaching the rare class where there's one stellar textbook for everything -- maybe this happens in some areas, but not in mine).

Finally, if the origin of those slides is really wikipedia (which you actually don't have any guarantees of), that is extremely lame, and definitely something to worry about -- because for someone who knows anything about a given field, there are almost certainly better sources than wikipedia (though maybe not faster sources).
posted by advil at 12:51 PM on October 28, 2008

I'm a teacher. If I see someone else doing something I think is really good, I'm gonna do it too.

Are the resources used in lessons good? Do they help you learn? Are your assignments good? Do the tasks you're set help you learn? If the answer to these questions is "yes" then stop worrying; if it's "no" then you might have a lazy teacher.
posted by alby at 1:08 PM on October 28, 2008

Another professor here. I write my own lectures and labs, but don't consider the materials I prepare to be "mine", any more than I consider teaching from the textbook to be plagiarism. I share them with colleagues, and they share material with me. Teaching is not (or should not be) about "owning" an idea - we're all in the profession together. As ROU_Xenophobe says, we live in very wide social networks as educators, and routinely share what works.

Research, on the other hand... well, that's where the knives come out ;-)
posted by media_itoku at 5:35 PM on October 28, 2008

media_itoku said something that I was unable to articulate earlier. Academia is about sharing when it comes to teaching, and about ownership when it comes to research - Communism vs Capitalism.
posted by zippy at 9:49 PM on October 28, 2008