Thursday, May 30, 2013

Developing a MOOCow? Who owns what/when? See: Coursera’s Terms of Service. Discuss 5/31 2pmET re: Teaching Online tlt.gs/frlv FridayLive!

Here are some questions prompted by 3 sections of Coursera's Terms of Service  [as of May 30, 2013] Any organization hosting/supporting online courses, MOOCs, "or whatever" must deal with similar issues - some of which raise genuinely new challenges! THIS IS NOT A COMPLAINT! 

  • ONLINE COURSE AND CERTIFICATIONS
    Not allowed to attempt  to get a Coursera course recognized by college or university?
  • PERMISSION TO USE MATERIALS
    Everything on the site owned by Coursera - even in a course developed by faculty member unaffiliated with Coursera?  What if faculty member developed and taught similar course first for some college/university?  What if faculty member who developed and taught a Coursera course wants to offer a similar course later at a college or university?
  • When using online materials as part of taking a Coursera course, cannot share them with colleagues?  
    Photo of cage-like holding cell
  • USER MATERIAL SUBMISSION
    Anything you submit (upload, post) as a student in a Coursera course can subsequently be used by Coursera in any way at all.

Some excerpts from Coursera's Terms of Service  [as of May 30, 2013]:

"...ONLINE COURSE AND CERTIFICATIONS
"... You acknowledge that neither the instructors of any Online Course nor the associated Participating Institutions will be involved in any attempts to get the course recognized by any educational or accredited institution, unless explicitly stated otherwise by Coursera. ...

"PERMISSION TO USE MATERIALS
"...All content or other materials available on the Sites, including but not limited to code, images, text, layouts, arrangements, displays, illustrations, audio and video clips, HTML files and other content are the property of Coursera and/or its affiliates or licensors...
...You may download material from the Sites only for your own personal, non-commercial use. You may not otherwise copy, reproduce, retransmit, distribute, publish, commercially exploit or otherwise transfer any material, nor may you modify or create derivatives works of the material.  

"USER MATERIAL SUBMISSION
"...With respect to User Content you submit or otherwise make available in connection with your use of the Site, and subject to the Privacy Policy, you grant Coursera and the Participating Institutions a fully transferable, worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free and non-exclusive license to use, distribute, sublicense, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such User Content. ... "

IMAGE selected by Steve Gilbert 20130530
"Old holding cell from the Los Rios Jail in San Juan Capistrano, California. Date 15 August 2008...courtesy of 888 Bail Bond Author Bondswoman ...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/LosRiosJailCell.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ALosRiosJailCell.jpg
"[CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons"
"I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following licenses:
  This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license."

1 comment:

  1. Charles J. Ansorge6:57 PM

    The points that are made in this posting are excellent and ones that should be discussed. Too often I gloss over the "Terms of Service" and do not think anything of it. I need further information to know how important these terms are to me. I bet others think the same way I do.

    ReplyDelete

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