FREQUENTLY ASKED FACULTY QUESTIONS ABOUT [Your Institution] OPENCOURSEWARE

How do I participate in [Your Institution's Name] OpenCourseWare?
[Your Institution's Name] OCW will not succeed without the support and contributions of [Your Institution's Name]’s world-class faculty. Because [Your Institution's Name] OCW is a strictly voluntary activity, we must minimize the amount of time that is required to plan, build, and publish your course materials on the [Your Institution's Name] OCW Web site.  In order to achieve this, we have assembled a multi-layered staff to manage the process for faculty. Our project director acts as a project manager and coordinator, working with you   to achieve your individual publishing goals. To begin planning your [Your Institution's Name] OCW Web site, please contact:

[Your contact info]

Can I still publish my materials on [Your Institution's Name] OCW if I will publish/have published a book containing the same materials?
When you publish your materials on [Your Institution's Name] OCW, you continue to retain copyright ownership of the materials. You are granting [Your Institution's Name] a non-exclusive, perpetual right (license) to publish your materials on the [Your Institution's Name] OCW Web site, and you agree to publish them to our users under the terms of the [Your Institution's Name] OCW Creative Commons license. As author, you may continue to use your materials as you see fit: You may publish them in other venues, use the materials in textbooks, and sell or assign any or all of your rights to others. Once you choose to participate in [Your Institution's Name] OCW, however, you may not withdraw the permission that you originally grant to [Your Institution's Name] to publish the materials on [Your Institution's Name] OCW, even if you decide use those materials or assign their rights in some other way in the future (except in very rare cases). As for whether you can participate in [Your Institution's Name] OCW if you have previously published a textbook using the educational materials you hope to publish on [Your Institution's Name] OCW, that really depends on the deal you struck with your textbook publisher. Some faculty negotiate to retain ownership of their materials when they publish books, and some do not. The [Your Institution's Name] OCW staff can help you check with your publisher about the copyright status of your materials.

How is [Your Institution's Name] OCW different from other course publication sites such as [Your University's CMS]?
[Name a Course management System your Faculty will know] is a course management system (CMS). It is designed to assist faculty in the active teaching of their courses using digital technologies. Often, access to the CMS teaching sites of faculty is limited to the class list or a select group of students. And a CMS frequently offers dynamic features, such as:

• 24/7 access and just-in-time updates
• Faculty-to-student, and student-to-student interactivity
• Discussion boards, managed forums and group collaborations
• Broadcast announcements and messages
• Homework submission
• Online assignment, tracking and grading of student work
• Course surveys and evaluations

In contrast, [Your Institution's Name] OCW is a free and open publication. And while you may use your [Your Institution's Name] OCW course site as a teaching site, [Your Institution's Name] OCW is a static publication. It is a snapshot in time of how a particular subject was taught by a particular member of the faculty in a particular semester. [Your Institution's Name] OCW has also been “contextualized” for users and—since it is free and open to the world, it faces stricter copyright standards—all issues surrounding Intellectual Property have been resolved. In contrast, materials published in a restricted LMS face fewer IP-related restrictions on publication.

I want to publish my materials to [Your Institution's Name] OCW, but I am very busy. How much of my time will be required?
[Your Institution's Name] OCW aims to be as low impact on faculty as possible. In most cases, an initial meeting is required. At this meeting, the project director will explain the basics of OCW publication and you will decide which materials you would like to share. After this meeting, [you will designate/ we will assign you] a Course Production Assistant who will be paid to do the majority of the necessary intellectual property work and page design, directed and assisted by OCW staff. Once materials are handed over to the graduate assistant, and you have answered any questions about the materials, very little work is required. Our staff will email you with any additional questions, letting you know when your course is built and ready for your review on the staging server.

How often will my [Your Institution's Name] OCW course site be updated?
[Your Institution's Name] OCW foresees three publishing cycles per year, with launches in September, January and May of each calendar year. The pace at which your individual course materials are updated depends on a variety of factors, including how fast research and teaching in your particular discipline is changing, how often the course is taught, how frequently you are updating and/or changing your teaching materials, and how your request for updates fit into [Your Institution's Name] OCW’s publishing cycles.

Will my students be able to use my [Your Institution's Name] OCW course site?
Your students are, of course, welcome to use your [Your Institution's Name] OCW site, as it is a free and open site accessible by anyone. But keep in mind that you will not be able to update the site on a regular basis, as you might update your personal web page or your teaching site on [Your University's CMS]. Content is “frozen” once it is published, unless you need to make minor edits through the Project Director or until you publish an updated version of your course site.

Who are your users and why should I share my materials with them?
Last year the 100 live OCWC sites reported an average of 2.7 million visits/month to its 6000+ courses. These courses receive traffic from around the world (more than 215 countries, city-states, and geographic regions). According to the MIT evaluation program, the users tend to break down into three roles: 16% identify themselves as educators, 32% are students enrolled in an academic program, and 47% are self-learners.

By participating in [Your Institution's Name] OCW, you are making your core teaching materials openly available for anyone, anywhere in the world with access to the Internet. And feedback tells us that the project is helping those it was designed to help — the educators, enrolled students, and self-learners in the evaluation data — by providing a high-quality publication of core teaching materials. The evaluation program has shown that OCW users overwhelmingly find that OCW has, or will have, significant positive impact on both teaching and learning activities. Over 80% of all users report either positive impact or extremely positive impact, 18% report moderate or some positive impact and less than 2% reporting no positive impact. Educators plan to reuse OCW materials in their teaching activities. Over 97% of users who identified themselves as educators expressed satisfaction with the quality of the course materials published in OCW. Over 47% have reused OCW materials (or plan to), and 41% may reuse materials in the future.

In measuring long-term success, we find that the challenge for [Your Institution's Name] and for educational institutions across our society lies in the second half of OCW's organizational mission: will other like-minded institutions begin to publish their educational materials freely and openly online? The hope is that one day, by sharing your high-quality course materials—along with our experience thus far in developing the [Your Institution's Name] OCW publication process—we will inspire other institutions to openly share their course materials, creating a worldwide web of knowledge that will benefit humanity.

Is there a faculty allowance associated with publishing my course on [Your Institution's Name] OCW?
Faculty do not receive royalty payments for publishing their materials on OCW, nor do they receive a faculty stipend. [Your Institution's Name] is providing significant resources to make faculty materials ready for publication in a high-quality form and format. We hope that you will find that this effort enhances your materials and makes them more valuable for your use in the classroom, or in any other way you may choose to use them in the future.

Why am I required to sign an Intellectual Property form before publishing a course on [Your Institution's Name] OCW?
In order to publish course materials and to grant open use to others, copyright law requires that [Your Institution's Name] have permission to do so from all copyright owners: you (the faculty author) plus all other owners of the materials that accompany or are embedded in your course.  This is a matter of legal, ethical, and financial concern to [Your Institution's Name]. In asking you to sign the Intellectual Property Permission Form, [Your Institution's Name] OCW is following a long-standing academic tradition — and [Your Institution's Name] policy — on ownership of course materials: as with the creation of textbooks, original authors retain full ownership of materials they create even when they submit them for [Your Institution's Name] OCW publication. Our policy of requiring IP signoff applies equally to faculty, staff, and student authors who make original educational materials available for [Your Institution's Name] OCW publication, as well as third-party owners.