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Issue Contents
CSU Global Adopts Sloan-C Online Teaching Certificate
Maria Puzziferro, Ph.D
As CSU-Global Campus prepared to launch as a fully online university in September 2008, quality was at the core of its mission and planning. CSU-Global Campus leadership started with the foundation of the Sloan-C Five Pillars of Quality Online Education: learning effectiveness, scale, access, faculty satisfaction, and student satisfaction. In an effort to create a culture of quality and live the values of the Five Pillars, CSU-Global Campus sought to collaborate with Sloan-C to create a unique collaboration to develop the Sloan- C Online Teaching Certificate in ways that extend the culture of quality online teaching and learning to faculty and students. In collaboration with Sloan-C, CSU-Global Campus has created an integrated curriculum for the Master's in Online Teaching and Learning by mapping the graduate curriculum to the Sloan-C Online Teaching Certificate curriculum. The Sloan-C courses: Getting Started, Effective Practice Laboratory and at least three (3) Sloan-C Workshop electives, such as podcasting and Web 2.0, are integrated into the CSU-Global Campus graduate-level courses. This arrangement allows students to simultaneously earn graduate credit and the Sloan-C Online Teaching Certificate, creating a learning experience for students based on current research in online teaching and learning, national standards, and industry best practices. An exciting next step is creating the Online Teaching and Learning specialization, including the Sloan-C Online Teaching Certificate that can be added to any CSU-Global Campus Master's degree program, to be offered in January 2009. In addition, CSU-Global Campus provides students with a Sloan-C membership, so that they can join and become fully and professionally engaged in the online teaching and learning community. Faculty development and support is the backbone of high-quality online education, and CSU-Global Campus is committed to creating multiple, engaging and professionally-oriented opportunities for online faculty. Also recognizing the value of connecting faculty to a national community of practice, CSU-Global Campus has made a commitment to offer all Core Faculty and instructional development staff the Sloan-C Online Teaching Certificate. For more information about this collaboration, contact rtbrown@sloan-c.org .
Sovereign Immunity, Public Employees & Personal Liability for Copyright Infringement
Lawyers are trained problem spotters. In fact, in law school, students routinely refer to exams as issue spotting contests. From a practitioner’s standpoint, the job is to protect the client. To do so, potential problems must be identified, risks assessed and the client informed and advised accordingly. As a result, lawyers are sometimes seen as beholders of nothing but bad news who employ scare tactics by telling people what can go wrong. Telling people what can go wrong is not only central to the job; failing to do so may be professional malpractice. Regrettably, some people confuse being told what might happen with what will happen. In reality, with the exception of getting divorced, most people go through their entire personal and professional lives without being a party to a lawsuit. All of the foregoing is an attempt to put a recent federal court decision in context. At the moment, there is no indication of large numbers of these cases in the system or some new trend. So, this is not a sounding of the alarm bells. Nevertheless, low risk is not no risk. Consequently, it is important to be aware of the possible limits to protection from federal lawsuits many public employees take for granted under the 11th amendment sovereign immunity provisions of the U.S. Constitution. In many respects, Marketing Information Masters, Inc. v. The Board of Trustees of the California State University System, a public entity; and Robert A Rauch, an individual is a garden variety copyright infringement case. Marketing Information Masters, Inc. alleges that Mr. Rauch infringed on one of its copyrights by directly copying large portions of one of its economic impact studies. At the time of the alleged infringement, Mr. Rauch was the Director of the Center for Hospitality and Tourism Research at San Diego State University, a public university in the California State University System. The claim was met with a predictable response. The university filed a motion to dismiss the case on the grounds of sovereign immunity which protects both public entities and their employees from being sued in federal courts. In an unusual application of sovereign immunity, the court agreed that sovereign immunity protected both the university system and Mr. Rauch as the Director of the Center. However, it concluded the lawsuit could proceed against him in his individual capacity. That is, the court allowed the lawsuit to proceed against him personally. At this point, the case against Mr. Rauch has neither gone to trial nor settled, so its final outcome on the question of whether he committed copyright infringement is unknown. Nevertheless, the facts as alleged in the case suggest a possible explanation for the court’s unexpected ruling. According to the court documents, Marketing Information Masters, Inc. (MIM) conducted economic impact studies for the Holiday Bowl Committee in relation to post-season college football games held in the San Diego area. MIM performed the studies at below market rates. After delivering the 2003 study, MIM informed the committee it could no longer perform the studies at reduced rates. Subsequently, the committee contracted with the Center for Hospitality and Tourism Research for the 2004 study. According to the complaint filed by MIM, Mr. Rauch contacted MIM after the Center got the contract for the study asking MIM to work on a consulting basis with the Center because Mr. Rauch didn’t know how to conduct economic impact studies. This concerned MIM which then contacted the executive director of the Holiday Bowl committee warning him to not give Mr. Rauch or the Center access to its proprietary information from previous years’ work. Nevertheless, Mr. Rauch and the Center did obtain such information. After the 2004 study was presented to the Holiday Bowl committee, MIM contacted SDSU claiming Mr. Rauch plagiarized large portions of the 2003 study. Ultimately, SDSU undertook an internal investigation of Mr. Rauch in relation to the preparation of the study and found he had committed plagiarism. The university issued "two formal letters of reprimand to Mr. Rauch." Generally speaking, sovereign immunity protects public employees who are acting within the scope of their employment as long as they are acting in good faith (even if it turns out they acted illegally). While the court doesn’t comment on good faith in its decision, the facts alleged against Mr. Rauch paint a picture that is hard to characterize as "acting in good faith." Understood in this light (while remembering the facts are alleged and not yet proven), the decision makes sense. Public employees who act in good faith (even though they may be wrong) can continue to enjoy 11th amendment sovereign immunity while those who act with impunity may find themselves paying the price—literally and personally.
Learn From the Experts - The Sloan-C 2008 Workshop Series NEW - Designing Blended Courses & Building a Blended Learning Community - Nov 10 - Dec 2 Through an examination of the ten basic questions of blended course redesign, participants will reconceive their traditional face-to-face courses for blended teaching and learning Participants will follow backwards design principles to design a course module Participants will build learning community by adopting effective practices of asynchronous discussion Participants will learn techniques for integrating face-to-face and online work, and apply them to their own courses. Click here for details and registration. Copyright Compliance for Online Educators - Nov 12 - 22 As an online educator, you need to know how copyright affects you when using materials to supplement your online courses. You also need to know how your original works can be protected. In this workshop, Linda Enghagen, of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, will take you through the key copyright issues that you and your colleagues should be aware of when preparing and delivering your online courses. Click here for details and registration. Avoiding Faculty Burnout - Nov 12 - 22 As more institutions are offering ongoing degree programs online, faculty burnout increasingly is a concern for faculty, administrators, and instructional designers. Online faculty tend to spend more time preparing and teaching their courses as compared to onground faculty. For faculty, this translates into more grading, a 24/7 access mentality, excessive amounts of computer time, as well as more people pulling and grabbing for faculty time and attention. This workshop will explore the issue of academic management in online learning and ways to ensure that faculty can incorporate online teaching into normal academic life. In addition to learning skills to avoid burnout that derives from multiple sources, participants will be encouraged to share their own institutional practices as part of the conversation. Click here for details and registration. Introduction to Second Life for Educators - Dec 3 - 13 Throughout this workshop participants will learn the basics of Second Life, and integrate learning theories in the use of virtual worlds. Participants will be encouraged to create activities that are student-centered and maximize the real potential of virtual worlds. A primary goal of the workshop is to get educators thinking about their classes and how the tools used in Second Life can be personalized for the learning environments that they create. The workshop will explore examples of good teaching in Second Life and move beyond PowerPoint, lecture, and passive learning. Participants will make use of asynchronous discussions, multimedia materials, reading assignments and live, interactive class sessions to collaborate, learn, and expand the range of instructional possibilities that are available to students. Click here for details and registration. |
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The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C), sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is composed of institutions and organizations dedicated to continually improving the quality, scale, and breadth of their online programs, according to their own distinctive missions, so that education becomes a part of everyday life, accessible and affordable for anyone, anywhere, at any time, in a wide variety of disciplines. The Sloan-C View is published by Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C™). Responsibility for the contents rests with the authors and not with Sloan-C™. Copyright ©2008 by Sloan-C™. If you have a question or comment, would like to submit an article for publication, or would like to suggest an event to be listed on the Sloan-C View Calendar, please email sloan-cview@sloan-c.org. Materials in the Sloan-C View, unless otherwise noted, may be distributed freely for educational purposes. However, if any materials are redistributed they must retain the copyright notice and use the proper citation. Kindly send an email to sloan-cview@sloan-c.org indicating how you are using the material for distribution. Your privacy is important to us, you can view our privacy policy at www.sloan-c.org/aboutus/privacy.asp This issue is being sent to: %%emailaddr%% If you do not wish to receive future issues, please send a blank email to %%email.unsub%% and your email address will be removed from our list. The Sloan Consortium, Olin Way, Needham, MA 02492-1200
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