Ask a Teacher - Teacher's ownership of student work?

[Solfe]

I had a funny thing happen to me last semester. I had three teachers tell me all of my classwork and papers belonged to them, the teacher. The first thing that popped into my head was "Why?"

I don't really want my first year Spanish or Dev Psychology tests, assignments and papers back. I can understand why a teacher would not want their tests on website or otherwise circulated. But I don't see why my teacher would want my notes or essays, permanently. To be honest, I doubt they are any good for anything; while I did pretty good in my classes there is nothing exceptional about them. Now I could see this being an issue in the case of publication of works as either an academic or financial enterprise, but how much work is published from a 2 year school?

My google-fu has failed. (I ended up on Youtube and may have hurt my brain reading comments.) Where does this concept of ownership of student's work come from?

It all seems rather pushy to me.

[primummobile]

Most colleges and universities have Intellectual Property Rights policies. Though they vary from place to place, they are usually pretty much along the lines of anything that can make the school money the school owns, while scholarly items like papers, manuscripts, plays, etc. remain the property of the creator. Even at that, your intructor wouldn't own anything you created. The instructor's employer would.

[danscope]

Can you simply make a copy of any work you submit? And I consider university to be a collected body of academia which builds on the work of the past, and is reflected in lectures and papers now and in the future.
You are part of that. Otherwise, college would be no more than an electronique question and answer form
employing true/false and multiple choice questions. It should be a much richer experience. Your contributions
aid that collective community. Every day, we learn again to share. It's easy to learn how to take.

[Solfe]

As far as I can tell, my school does not appear to have IP rights statement or clause in their official documentation (forms, applications, student guidelines, the handbook, student ethics agreement, etc.).

I was tempted to asked all three of these teachers about that statement, but they seemed pretty worked up at the time. That would have been trolling in my book.

I do have a copy of everything I produced such as essays; as I said I am not terribly interested in the teacher's forms, assignment sheets, worksheets, tests, etc. Those seem fairly useless to me, I hope they aren't storing them for future reference. Nothing I didn't is that exciting.

I don't mind if an essay, assignment or drawing ever shows up as an example for teaching. But it seems to me that the teacher doesn't really "own" anything in this case. I would think if they wanted to use it they will substantially change, edit, reformat, etc. Except for when they don't - "This is a paper with the correct heading format". They just appropriated it for teaching. That's ok by me.

I was just wondering if this is a tradition or old law, because the idea didn't make sense to me.

[ShinAce]

In high school, teachers kept two of my works, with permission. One was a model of the Teotihuacan site in Mexico. I didn't feel like carrying it home, and the teacher wanted to keep it to show others next year. After all, it was a sheet of drywall with sand glued to it. Win-win. I don't even remember how I got it to school.

The other was in grade 9 shop class. Our project was to build a DC motor. I used permanent magnets on the outside and coils on the inside with a basic stator(cork with a copper pipe cut in half). Mounted that sucker into a big old plastic mustard jar, cut a hole for a window, and called it a day. Total build time was under 3 hours, including winding the coils. However, everyone else built theirs entirely out of wood and all electromagnets. You have to give them a good 12 volts to get them turning and they would burn, whereas mine ran cool on a AA battery. Since everyone accused me of cheating for using permanent magnets(can't blame them, most spent way too much time on it without even having a way to test it at home), he asked me if he could keep it and would use it as an example for next year. It worked great and was mostly obscured from view, being an opaque container and all. Kind of like a "it can be done people!".

However, if I ever found out a teacher distributed one of my java programs without my permission, I would quickly approach the teacher and would not be polite about it. If you want to threaten that plagiarism is a cause for expulsion, don't do it yourself.

As far as I'm concerned, if the teacher asks for permission, and you say ok, then it's fine. Whether that's being considerate or a requirement, therein lies the debate. For some reason, I expect a teacher to keep a student's work confidential. As a teacher, if you go home and start posting pictures of funny things the kids did on your facebook, you're not a professional and should be held liable for any defamation that may result.

[DonM435]

For most of my school career, keeping a copy of everything that I turned in would have involved typing with carbon paper, or else standing at a "Xerox" machine with lots of quarters in hand -- so I didn't do much of that.

It must be a lot easier these days!

(I did type a few term papers on "erasable" paper so as to correct errors along the way. Sometimes I cut and pasted (literally) a few paragraphs that couldn't easily be erased. It was really messy, but the photocopy looked okay, and that's what I turned in.)

[Solfe]

For most of my school career, keeping a copy of everything that I turned in would have involved typing with carbon paper, or else standing at a "Xerox" machine with lots of quarters in hand -- so I didn't do much of that.

It must be a lot easier these days!

(I did type a few term papers on "erasable" paper so as to correct errors along the way. Sometimes I cut and pasted (literally) a few paragraphs that couldn't easily be erased. It was really messy, but the photocopy looked okay, and that's what I turned in.)

I had someone do that to me with a lab paper. We had these forms to fill out and my lab partner lost his copy, then the copy the teacher gave him and then the blank copy I gave him. It was the last day of school and all of the computer labs with scanners were closed. So I had to ask my teacher if I could photocopy my final paper with the answers masked out.

The teacher was amused that it occurred to me to do that. I taped paper over my answers and my teacher photocopied for me. Strangest group effort ever, let me tell you. Needless to say, I didn't stick around to see how that lab project turned out for him. He was already 4 weeks late with most of his work. He was lucky the teacher let him turn them in at all.

[DoggerDan]

For most of my school career, keeping a copy of everything that I turned in would have involved typing with carbon paper, or else standing at a "Xerox" machine with lots of quarters in hand.

I didn't have a lot of quarters, either. I did have half a dozen sheets of well-used carbon paper.

It must be a lot easier these days!

While working on my masters, we were required to date/time stamp our papers at front desk before putting them in the teacher's inbox. I always made my copy after it was date/time stamped!

[Jens]

My google-fu has failed. (I ended up on Youtube and may have hurt my brain reading comments.) Where does this concept of ownership of student's work come from?

I don't think it comes from anywhere, frankly. I think your teachers are completely wrong. As far as I understand it, if you write something, the copyright is by default yours unless you assign it to somebody else. At the place where I work, research done by researchers employed by the institute is the property of the institute, but researchers have to sign an agreement to this effect when they are employed. Without that kind of an assignment, whatever you write should be yours.

[Solfe]

I don't think it comes from anywhere, frankly. I think your teachers are completely wrong. As far as I understand it, if you write something, the copyright is by default yours unless you assign it to somebody else. At the place where I work, research done by researchers employed by the institute is the property of the institute, but researchers have to sign an agreement to this effect when they are employed. Without that kind of an assignment, whatever you write should be yours.

I am 99.9% certain you are correct. I guess I will have to wait until I graduate and then ask one of them where they got the idea.

I have a suspicion that some colleges/departments might have some sort of copyright claim on work when the student receives money from the college to produce a work, uses a college press to print a major work, submits a work to a college publication, etc. I would consider this to be a non-standard, standard practice at higher levels of learning but not at my level.

I had one of those agreements where I worked. I left dozens of binders behind with instructions to at least look them over before destroying them. I know at least one is still being used - it was a binder full of conference room phone numbers and maps to the conference rooms; for some reason they liked to rename the conference rooms at random making directories useless.

[ABR.]

Interesting thread. I seriously doubt these teachers are mining exam papers for intellectual content, but they are the only ones who can truly answer that question. Rather, my first thought today was that these teachers were collecting the work so as to prevent future cheating, as you alluded to in the OP. My school days mostly pre-date the Internet, but I had several professors who made it a point to tell us that our exam papers would be destroyed. My major advisor shredded all exams, then used the shreds to fertilize his roses. There was this one exam in Limnology which doubled the size of his rose blossoms...ah, but I digress.

I discussed this thread with my wife just now. She teaches at a local community college and suggested an alternative interpretation. She is required -- by the school -- to archive certain items (grade books, final exams, etc.) for up to five years after the end of a semester. The reason for this is grade justification. Students at her school have the right to challenge any grade during this five-year time period. So far, she's been lucky and hasn't been formally challenged, although she and her colleagues have had their share of grumbling students. Anyway, she went on to suggest that other schools may require even more materials to be kept on hand than she is and that it sounds like Solfe's school may be one of these.

[Jens]

I discussed this thread with my wife just now. She teaches at a local community college and suggested an alternative interpretation. She is required -- by the school -- to archive certain items (grade books, final exams, etc.) for up to five years after the end of a semester.

I think that makes sense, and it may be that the teachers were confusing the concept of copyright with physical possession. In the same way that a letter is treated. For example, if I write a letter to somebody, it is my copyright -- the person cannot copy what I wrote and publish as his own. But at the same time, the letter is physically possessed by the other person, so I cannot demand that the physical letter be returned. For example, here is an explanation from some website:

When a person writes a personal letter and sends it to someone, the author retains copyright to the content of the letter and the recipient owns the physical letter. The recipient can show the letter to others and give or sell the letter to someone else, including to a museum or library that will display the letter at one site. However, it is a violation of copyright if anyone makes or distributes copies of the letter without the approval of the author (or subsequent copyright holder).

So I think the teachers might be meaning to say that they have physical possession of your papers, and don't have to return them. That absolutely does not mean, IMO, that they own copyrights.

[DonM435]

Back in the 1970s, I used to see classified adverts for "TERM PAPERS: Any Topic." It appears that, for a (phe)nominal fee they'd send you an appropriate paper for research purposes, but if you chose to use it intact, it wasn't their problem. Their stash of papers might have been accumulated via purchase from students. Then again, it may have been a retired teacher with an enterprising but unethical spirit.

(I remember John Roche, a political columnist who'd been a professor, writing that once he actually got back a paper he'd written many years earlier, with the new student's name in place of his. Needless to say, that kid flunked.)

[Solfe]

Copyright is a seriously messed up issue. It used to be that unpublished works like letters were not protected by copyright, and such items were exempt from fair use. That meant they were protected forever, (unless they landed in the hands of someone who wasn't the author). That actually makes a lot of sense, it kept personal correspondence out of the public view.

I can totally understand the retention policy. That is just good policy.

[John Jaksich]

This is an interesting topic---and I think that it may depend upon the instructor. When I was a undergraduate (in the 1980s) I performed undergraduate research with chem professor and his other students (both graduate and undergraduate) ---we did various projects such as ---(1) streamlining laboratory experiments for instruction (2) our own research (some more serious than others) (3) assisting research for the professor (4) assisting research with graduate students and undergrads (5) grading the purity and yields of undergraduate organic chem labs --and (6) various lab-related clean-up projects.

I cannot think of anyone involved in that particular lab who did not wind up with a better education than those (at the time) who were not required to perform any extra projects---it was invaluable.

A great number of us ended up being published in that particular lab---(even if it just included a lab experiment being adopted by the chem dept).

However, back to the OP---I have noted that many instructors will copyright their notes and try to assure that nothing really goes into the public domain--as it may have in the previous generations. In some ways, it may be a compliment to your creative and analytical thinking processes if the instructor uses your answers for their "instructive purposes"

[Solfe]

This is very interesting.

I am a note taker at school. I usually provide notes via the web (HTML) but have done notes in ebub, pdf and Google docs or provided laptops, jump drives and SD cards. This was always done with the teacher's permission, coordinated with the student service department and was for the purpose of providing class material for students who could take notes (deaf, broken arms, dyslexia [which is funny because I have dyslexia], etc.).

I was roped into doing this my first semester as I was running a study group on Google+, Facebook and Skype in addition to local meet ups. I was told I would be paid, but it sounded like the student him or herself would pay me. I thought I was going to get a cup of coffee or some other trivial payment from a student. I was very surprised when someone actually cut me a check.

The odd bit was no one in any official capacity asked me for a copy of my notes and no one asked me about the ramifications of uploading to Google or Facebook, etc. I actually burned a bunch of discs and provide them to the teachers in question which were accepted like a lump of coal.

I am wondering if someone raised heck in a couple of departments by challenging one or two teachers methods. It would explain why I only heard claims of ownership from the three teacher located in one wing of one building.

[Grey]

Back in the 1970s, I used to see classified adverts for "TERM PAPERS: Any Topic." It appears that, for a (phe)nominal fee they'd send you an appropriate paper for research purposes, but if you chose to use it intact, it wasn't their problem. Their stash of papers might have been accumulated via purchase from students. Then again, it may have been a retired teacher with an enterprising but unethical spirit.

This remains, unfortunately, a thriving business, and the internet has made it even faster and easier to acquire a paper on any topic. Here's an interesting article on the subject.

[Gillianren]

I once wrote poetry in the margins of a geology test. (It was a rock identification test, and you had to wait for the person ahead of you to be done with the rock and pass it on. One slow person could delay the entire class.) That test, I assuredly got back; well, all he'd have to do was pass out the rocks in a different order next time. He also didn't own copyright on those poems, and indeed seemed pretty alarmed at them.

[DonM435]

I once wrote poetry in the margins of a geology test. (It was a rock identification test, and you had to wait for the person ahead of you to be done with the rock and pass it on. One slow person could delay the entire class.) That test, I assuredly got back; well, all he'd have to do was pass out the rocks in a different order next time. He also didn't own copyright on those poems, and indeed seemed pretty alarmed at them.

Let me guess:

I think that I shall never see
A rock so dumb as Charlie C.
He stares and scratches at the ore.
Our time he wastes and wastes some more …

; )

[DoggerDan]

Let me guess:

I think that I shall never see
A rock so dumb as Charlie C.
He stares and scratches at the ore.
Our time he wastes and wastes some more …

; )

I thought it might be:

There once was a box of rocks...

Nevermind. I don't like where that one was going, Lol!

[Solfe]

This remains, unfortunately, a thriving business, and the internet has made it even faster and easier to acquire a paper on any topic. Here's an interesting article on the subject.

He has a book coming out under the name of Dave Tomar. I wonder if it will be any good and if that is his real name.

[DonM435]

I thought it might be:

There once was a box of rocks...

Nevermind. I don't like where that one was going, Lol!

There was a rock-fondler named Cass.
Held onto the rock: wouldn't pass!
And when we got tired
We all were inspired
To ...


I think you can imagine the rest

[geonuc]

I think that makes sense, and it may be that the teachers were confusing the concept of copyright with physical possession. In the same way that a letter is treated. For example, if I write a letter to somebody, it is my copyright -- the person cannot copy what I wrote and publish as his own. But at the same time, the letter is physically possessed by the other person, so I cannot demand that the physical letter be returned. For example, here is an explanation from some website: So I think the teachers might be meaning to say that they have physical possession of your papers, and don't have to return them. That absolutely does not mean, IMO, that they own copyrights.

I believe this is correct. I don't think there's any question of a transfer of copyright with regard to school exam papers, just a transfer of possession. I do think there are instances where the school has the right to publish student work, however. Doctoral theses, for example.

ETA: doctoral dissertations, I should say. Thanks ngc3314

[ngc3314]

Our university has a policy where the instructor is supposed to retain all paperwork related to course grades for (7?) years, and final gradebooks are supposed to be retained indefinitely by the department. In today' world, all student work with anything individually identifiable has to be either returned or shredded upon disposal. There was a horror story (IIRC, at some in-state campus) in which a large pile of old student essays were piled in a hallway to be simply thrown out, and some bright soul found a graded essay from a state legislator long ago, then publicized the very low marks the essay had received. In these days when most papers are handed in electronically, and there is no anti-plagiarism gain to not returning a printed copy, the question for me becomes when I can in good conscience delete all the files from a particular class. (I now have a statement in the syllabus that all queries about quiz scores must be made by the end of classes, so I need not hang on to the scanned answer sheets past that. The university administration apparently regards a syllabus as legally binding, so no one complains).

On geonuc's point - copyright for a dissertation normally rests explicitly with the student. That's built in to a lot of the template files distributed by grad schools these days (I don't recall thinking of it at all back in my day, though). I see that the current UMI dissertation agreement gets rather intricate about various possible flavors of open-access dissertation publishing.