Will Online College Courses Help Reduce Textbook Prices?; Forbes, August 7, 2020

Robert Farrington, Forbes; Will Online College Courses Help Reduce Textbook Prices?

"Sympathetic professors often don’t even require textbooks at all, or they make it easy for students to access materials online — and this was even before the pandemic took hold. 

Movement To Open Educational Resources (OER)

Schools who planned to transition online this year due to Covid-19 had the entire summer to figure out ways to present their materials, whether that includes Zoom meetings, message boards, their own platforms, or the many other options available. It’s likely that some of them will have moved a lot of their course material entirely to the web, which could eliminate the need for physical textbooks altogether for some classes. 

But there was a major move toward free college textbooks that predates the pandemic, according to Brian Galvin, the Chief Academic Officer for Varsity Tutors. Galvin says that the biggest lever colleges have to pull is the popularity of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, which has seen professors choose to teach courses using e-textbooks that are essentially "open-source" and made available by nonprofits that aim to reduce the cost of learning."

Free Textbooks for Law Students; Inside Higher Ed, January 3, 2020

Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed; Free Textbooks for Law Students

"Law school is notoriously expensive, but a growing number of professors are pushing back on the idea that law textbooks must be expensive, too. Faculty members at the New York University School of Law have taken matters into their own hands by publishing their own textbooks at no cost to students."

As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating; New York Times, May 29, 2017

Jess Bidgood and Jeremy B. Merrill, New York Times; 

As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating

"In interviews, professors and students said the causes were not hard to pin down.

To some students drawn to the classes, coding does not come easily. The coursework can be time-consuming. Troves of code online, on sites like GitHub, may have answers to the very assignment the student is wrestling with, posted by someone who previously took the course.

“You’ve got kids who were struggling with spending a third of their time on their problem sets with the option to copy from the internet,” said Jackson Wagner, who took the Harvard course in 2015 and was not accused of copying. “That’s the reason why people cheat.”

Complicating matters is the collaborative ethos among programmers, which encourages code-sharing in ways that might not be acceptable in a class. Professors also frequently allow students to discuss problems among themselves, but not to share actual code, a policy that some students say creates confusion about what constitutes cheating."

New York Times Says Fair Use Of 300 Words Will Run You About $1800; New York Times, 6/10/16

Tim Cushing, TechDirt; New York Times Says Fair Use Of 300 Words Will Run You About $1800:

"Fair use is apparently the last refuge of a scofflaw. Following on the heels of a Sony rep's assertion that people could avail themselves of fair use for the right price, here comes the New York Times implying fair use not only does not exist, but that it runs more than $6/word.

Obtaining formal permission to use three quotations from New York Times articles in a book ultimately cost two professors $1,884. They’re outraged, and have taken to Kickstarter — in part to recoup the charges, but primarily, they say, to “protest the Times’ and publishers’ lack of respect for Fair Use.”

These professors used quotes from other sources in their book about press coverage of health issues, but only the Gray Lady stood there with her hand out, expecting nearly $2,000 in exchange for three quotes totalling less than 300 words.

The professors paid, but the New York Times "policy" just ensures it will be avoided by others looking to source quotes for their publications. The high rate it charges (which it claims is a "20% discount") for fair use of its work will be viewed by others as proxy censorship. And when censorship of this sort rears its head, most people just route around it. Other sources will be sought and the New York Times won't be padding its bottom line with ridiculous fees for de minimis use of its articles.

The authors' Kickstarter isn't so much to pay off the Times, but more to raise awareness of the publication's unwillingness to respect fair use."

Panel Issues Guide to Using Copyrighted Material in the Classroom - Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/11/08

Via Chronicle of Higher Education: Panel Issues Guide to Using Copyrighted Material in the Classroom

"The guide, to be released today, is called "Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media-Literacy Education." The center created the guide over the course of 10 meetings that involved more than 150 educators, and it was reviewed by a panel of lawyers who are experts in fair use—the doctrine that allows people to reproduce portions of copyrighted works for purposes like teaching or scholarship...

The guide argues that discussion of copyright in education has too often been shaped by copyright holders, "whose understandable concern about large-scale copyright piracy has caused them to equate any unlicensed use of copyright material with stealing." The authors say they hope their work will help professors understand their rights better under current law...

Will a misstep on copyright in the classroom get you sued? "That's very, very unlikely," says the new guide. "We don't know of any lawsuit actually brought by an American media company against an educator over the use of media in the educational process.""

http://chronicle.com/free/2008/11/7151n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en