Who owns my lecture notes & slides? Me or the institution?

JuliusCaesar

Who owns my lecture notes & slides? Me or the institution?

I ask as I am a little miffed - a lot miffed - at the way I'm being treated by my department. My hours have been reduced, and I suspect the thinking is that I've done all my lecture prep in the last few years, so I no longer need time for that. Of course this means I can't replace the prep time with research as I had intended. So I was thinking that I would wipe the computer when my contract expires. (The student version is up on the moodle anyway.) I don't see why I should make my successors life easy as I had to develop everything from scratch.

solerina

As far as I know an author always owns his/her own work unless your contracted to develop a product for your employer !!

trihead

open to correction but I think if you did up the notes using company/university equipment ie computer and during working time ie on their time - they have a legal right to your notes or part of.

trihead

highly1111

The institution does. They employed you to develop the notes and it falls under intellectual property laws. I sought legal advice about this once. Best not to burn your bridges anyway but good luck.

evolving_doors

Just "re-edit" the notes for the next term,,, possibly make them more" concise"!!!

blucey

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

Who owns my lecture notes & slides? Me or the institution?

I ask as I am a little miffed - a lot miffed - at the way I'm being treated by my department. My hours have been reduced, and I suspect the thinking is that I've done all my lecture prep in the last few years, so I no longer need time for that. Of course this means I can't replace the prep time with research as I had intended. So I was thinking that I would wipe the computer when my contract expires. (The student version is up on the moodle anyway.) I don't see why I should make my successors life easy as I had to develop everything from scratch.

When you say hours reduced....your not full-time therre?

Jokesetal

I left a post through choice and left pdf versions of all my notes. It meant the next person used my notes as is, with my name at the bottom. The students knew who prepared the notes, they still got the material and I left with my head held high. I still work with my ex-colleagues, act as an external examiner and use the material in a different format for some current courses.

JuliusCaesar

blucey wrote: »

When you say hours reduced....you're not full-time there?

No, part-time

Jokesetal wrote: »

I left a post through choice and left pdf versions of all my notes. It meant the next person used my notes as is, with my name at the bottom. The students knew who prepared the notes,

If only I'd put my name on everything! I'll do that in future - oh, no prep time this year.

Thanks everyone.

evolving_doors

If I was a lecturer using someone elses notes the first thing id do is remove the previous name...if you're still employed by institution then your perfectly entitled to reedit them,, so if you want to render them unusable,, re edit them to the point of basic bullit points...

then again you might be disappointed to learn that someone taking over you old post might not even bother with your notes anyway! A friend of mine who did an interview for a lecturing post was asked in his interview if he would have any problem with making his own notes available to the college, I suspect if you leave they may check out what you have left behind..

the most rewarding thing you could do is switch your bosses tea and coffee to decaffinated

CIARAN_BOYLE

I've a lecturer in college who came on day one this year and informed his students that he produced lecture notes in class on acetate and that he owned his notes and that they were his intellectual property. He was a little psychotic about the fact that he owns them.

A little delusional according to the previous posts maybe.