Developing and disseminating learning resources
Topic: Compiling learning materials for your students
What is acceptable practice for acknowledging your sources, in teaching materials that you develop for use with your students? If a lecturer doesn't reference borrowed ideas and textual materials presented in lecture notes or handouts, is this plagiarism? How important is it for staff to set a good example to students by crediting their own sources of teaching and learning materials?
This topic is designed to help you to improve:
- the way you think about originality and attribution in developing learning materials for your students
- the way you model good practice in citing your sources in the learning materials that you develop for your students
In this unit of study you are asked to review a selection of the teaching materials that you have prepared for your own students in the past. Start your review.
Further reading on this topic :
… is scant:
Alexander, J. (1988). Lectures: The ethics of borrowing. College Teaching, 36(1), 21-24.*
“Teachers should cite the source of a borrowed idea; professors should be as original in their presentation of material as they expect their students to be in their course papers. Instructors who allow the impression that discourse taken from others is their own are plagiarizing.”(Abstract)
Baron, J. (1999). A memorable dream: Plagiarism. British Medical Journal, 319, 1495.**
“At one congress, I dreamt that I was lecturing on my particular area and was showing my favourite series of slides solving, at least to my satisfaction, a critical pathophysiological problem. And then I woke to find the lecture was being given not by me but by a Ruritanian professor who was showing as his work slide after slide of mine.” (p.1495)
Note: This topic addresses moral rights, but it does not address other aspects of copyright. Please consult the following sites for guidance on copyright:
University of Melbourne Copyright information for staff http://www.unimelb.edu.au/copyright/staff.html
Monash University Copyright information for staff http://www.copyright.monash.edu.au/index-staff.html
Overview | Compiling learning materials for your students | Using students' work as a teaching resource
Publishing curriculum and learning materials | Authoring reusable learning objects
* Used with permission of Heldref Publications.
**Used with permission of the BMJ Publishing Group.