Protecting the Teaching Material

After you have taught a number of courses on the net, you might start thinking of protecting the teaching material. Do we want the teaching material to be left on the net available to anybody? Would people start using this teaching material at their own institution without second thoughts?

I do not have the answer to this! For safety's sake it might be a good idea to take a few precautions.

Password Protection

There are a number of ways to protect the material:

1) The ZIP file may be password-protected. This password must be stated every time the ZIP file is unpacked.

2) Demanding a user name and a password on the Web page before being admitted to the rest of the Web pages.

3) Restrict the distribution of news messages and/or establish mailing lists comprising those persons who may read the newsgroups in question, for example the NITOL groups.

Lesson Copyright Notices

It is also essential to state copyrights for the author in the lessons. This makes it somewhat harder for others to use your material. However, it is also desirable to be liberal in the use of teaching material. If a colleague or another upper-secondary-school teacher should want to use your material, this should not be difficult to arrange.

Nonetheless, if other institutions were to want to utilise the material commercially, for example for their own courses, that would put the matter into another light. In such cases agreements must be entered into before the material is used.

In actual fact we are entering new spheres here. When we offer our material electronically it is very easy to copy the material and use it in other contexts. It is even very easy to edit it or rework it so it becomes more difficult to recognise.


Created by Geir Maribu, 16. November 1996