the sharing of syllabi

On another board I frequent, a poster raised the question:

Is sharing syllabi with other students ethical since the syllabus is the intellectual property of the professor?

The situation that led to the post is that students of one of the universities offering an online PhD program (NCU) has a Yahoo group in which students do share syllabi.

What do you think? It caused me to do some digging. I don't openly post complete syllabi, but I have used parts of them in my portfolio to help explain my work.

 

Thanks Rhet! I think its pretty crummy of a school to set the stipulation for a syllabus's appearance on BB only. What about using the school's copiers. They could make the same claim then. I'd put mine on my own site and link it!

------------------------------------

Since that question came up on the other forum, I've done some digging. It seems that the American Association of Univeristy Professor's stance is that the syllibus is intellectual property. They have a sample document/contract for colleges/universitities to draw wording from. Not surprising I know.

One of the sites I visited (mmmm I think it was Southern Indiana) said that the college could use the syllabus (among other things) for 3 years after after a teacher left. Other colleges have said that the syllabus is not intellectual property but work done for hire and belongs to the university.

But if a syllabus is put out in public -- say on an open link -- is it wrong for someone to lead another person to it? Does someone have an unfair advantage in seeing the syllabus early?

Those are some of the questions raised. I'm not sure I buy that the syllabus is intellectual property per se because I think that something similar could be set up by many of us in the same field. For courses I'm taking, I would like to see the syllabus ahead of time. I've taken a couple of courses over the years that weren't what I thought they'd be. As a teacher, I don't mind others (teachers or students) using mine. Of course, I've put mine out there for anyone doing a search, and I've gotten some from people who used mine as a guide.

I've always thought of my syllabus as more administrative and less intellectual in nature. There isn't much original on it expect for the organization of the class. The wording is of course mine, but how many ways can you say what you'll do in a specific math class? The most original thing on mine is an FAQ section which I've found very helpful in eliminating questions.