Copyright Issues in Teaching with Technology

Introduction
The copyright law places college faculty members in an unusual conflict of interest situation. All of you have prepared lecture notes, conference presentations or other unpublished papers that represent your intellectual property and to which you are entitled copyright protection. Many of you have published materials, for which you have either retained the copyrights or assigned them to the publishers. You may even receive royalties or other forms of revenue from these publications. Thus, you are in a unique position to appreciate the copyright law, because it preserves your rights and attempts to protect your income stream from these materials.

However, as teachers and facilitators of student learning, you have a somewhat different perspective on copyright. In this role, you want the broadest possible access to copyrighted materials. You wish to duplicate journal articles, book chapters, and other printed materials of value and distribute them to your students. During your lectures, you want to display audiovisual materials and other works created by others. You’d like to provide your students maximum access to Internet resources. Each of these examples involves the intellectual property of others, and they are equally entitled to copyright protection.

This orientation to copyright is intended to assist DWU faculty (and students) in this latter role, using intellectual property owned by others in your teaching and learning activities.

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