“I own it,don’t I?” The Rules of Academic Copyright Ownership and You

Abstract

This article delves into a few areas of copyright law that academic authors often overlook: joint author’s rights and the work made for hire doctrine. Scholarly publications produced by university professors often include more than one author. The default copyright laws apply to any such works if there is no specific written agreement to the contrary. Thus, it is important to understand what those default rules are in order to determine whether it is appropriate to deviate from them in an author agreement. Similarly, the work made for hire doctrine would normally apply to make all work produced by professors owned by the university. Luckily, many universities do not wish to own such work and give it back to professors through university statutes and other governing documents. However, it is crucial to understand whether the default rules apply or the university permits professors to negotiate their own author agreements with publishers. Finally, if authors own their own scholarly works, publishers can expect that they will negotiate their rights in the publishing agreements to benefit the terms most favorable to the author. And yet, many faculty members simply sign a standard authorship agreement without asking for concessions on the part of the publisher. Thus, this article empowers professors to exercise their copyright rights to the full extent of the law and to negotiate their author’s agreements to benefit themselves and society as a whole through open access and the use of Creative Commons licenses.     

Scientific thought as dogmatism

In science, positivism has had a major impact on how we see the world. It has resulted in the belief that there is only one true answer to a question, all answers are knowable, and that those answers may be combined into a single coherent theory. The authors argue that positivistic thought has mischaracterized the dialectical process and that positivism results in dogmatic thought. The suggestion is made that a more appropriate way of understanding the development of thought is to interpret the activity of knowing as a series of syntheses rather than dramatic resolutions.     

A model for using a concept inventory as a tool for students' assessment and faculty professional development

This essay describes how the use of a concept inventory has enhanced professional development and curriculum reform efforts of a faculty teaching community. The Host Pathogen Interactions (HPI) teaching team is composed of research and teaching faculty with expertise in HPI who share the goal of improving the learning experience of students in nine linked undergraduate microbiology courses. To support evidence-based curriculum reform, we administered our HPI Concept Inventory as a pre- and postsurvey to approximately 400 students each year since 2006. The resulting data include student scores as well as their open-ended explanations for distractor choices. The data have enabled us to address curriculum reform goals of 1) reconciling student learning with our expectations, 2) correlating student learning with background variables, 3) understanding student learning across institutions, 4) measuring the effect of teaching techniques on student learning, and 5) demonstrating how our courses collectively form a learning progression. The analysis of the concept inventory data has anchored and deepened the team's discussions of student learning. Reading and discussing students' responses revealed the gap between our understanding and the students' understanding. We provide evidence to support the concept inventory as a tool for assessing student understanding of HPI concepts and faculty development.     

Psychological causation and goal-based episodes: Low-income children's emerging narrative skills

This study examined the association between an understanding of psychological causation and the ability of young children to produce goal-based episodes in narratives. Participants were white, pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children living in a low income neighborhood in an industrial city in Appalachia (n = 34). They were asked to “read” Mercer Mayer's A Boy, A Dog, and A Frog to a researcher, and the resulting narrative was examined for use of psychological causation and number of goal-based episodes. Overall 68% of the children used psychological causation and 71% of the participants produced at least one goal-based episode. Use of psychological causation was related to age, and was a stronger predictor of producing goal-based episodes than was either age, or overall language ability. Further research is called for.     

Student performance in high-stakes examinations based on content area in senior secondary (VCE) physical education

Background: Senior secondary physical education courses for certification continue to evolve with curricula reform occurring to ensure content is contemporary, student learning outcomes are maximised and assessment practices are valid for determining certification of students. The content of examinable senior secondary physical education courses privilege theoretical concepts over student physical performance of motor skills and this is reflected in the use of written assessment of cognitive outcomes in many courses internationally.

Purpose: Student examination data were analysed from the year 12 (exit year) written examination of Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) Physical Education to determine if student performance varied by Area of Study (content). Additionally, it investigated whether there was a relationship between student performance in each of the four Areas of Study examined and overall examination performance and considered the alignment of curriculum, assessment and pedagogy and the implications the findings may have on the teaching of VCE Physical Education in the future.

Methods: A secondary data analysis of student results from the 2011 (n?=?9323; M?=?5212, F?=?4111) and 2012 (n?=?8781; M?=?5011, F?=?3770) VCE Physical Education (Victoria, Australia) examinations were conducted. Examination questions were categorised by content, and means and standard deviations (SD) for discrete and continuous data were calculated, and categorical variables were presented as percentages. Regression analysis was also performed to establish the relationship between student cohort size and examination scores. An independent sample t-test was used to explore the examination scores and each Area of Study scores across 2011 and 2012. A one-way ANOVA were performed to investigate the differences of each Area of Study scores between examination grades from UG to A+.

Results: The results showed a positive correlation between VCE Physical Education student cohort size in a school and examination score in 2011 and 2012. Student performance differed across both years (2011 and 2012) and across Areas of Study within each of the years analysed. Students performed significantly lower on questions relating to the ‘planning, implementing and evaluating a training program’ Area of Study in 8 of the 11 possible grades (2011) and 10 of the possible 11 grades (2012) than in each of the other Areas of Study.

Discussion and conclusions: This study reveals that student performance on the external VCE Physical Education examination is not consistent across all content areas (Areas of Study). This may suggest that student difficulties in answering questions based on content in ‘planning, implementing and evaluating a training program’ result from topic or content difficulty rather than process or question difficulty. From these findings, implications for teaching examinable physical education effectively include the use of experiential learning and practical experiences to provide students with experiences from which they can draw knowledge when completing written assessment tasks. Additionally, the importance of having the required content knowledge to teach examinable physical education confidently for pre-service and in-service teachers is discussed.