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For the record, I am a tenured professor who shares my syllabi, & am overdue to redesign my personal site so it’s easier for me to share them. That said, I want to also share some context and nuance in some aspects of that sharing. A small thread on credit.
I declined compensated training this summer because I would have been required to sign away my Canvas course materials & structure in full for my college to reuse at will. That normally is labor compensated at a higher rate, & has different purpose than what I intended to do.
I don’t blame anyone who jumped on extra cash, but that incentive looms largest precisely for the faculty most likely to need better compensation, and who most risk losing their jobs & having their work used by others.
I realize that it’s a different case than sharing syllabi — but the same *language* and emotional labor levers are often used interchangeably.
Separate case, separate thought: my syllabi *also* cite the colleagues whose materials I’ve drawn from, which was modeled to me by other colleagues & mentors. At least one senior colleague strongly discouraged me from doing so.
This was frustrating to me in no small part because it goes hand in hand with a culture that dismissed pedagogical publications as negligible. So while for example http://www.syllabusjournal.org/ exists (thank god), any pubs there still wouldn’t *count*
My point in this little thread is that my institution’s mixed messaging mirrors the sort of tangle we’ve all gotten ourselves into when we talk about teaching, innovation, and sharing: no clear guides on credit (in terms of cash OR in terms of citation)
For what it’s worth, many many many more faculty at my institution are doing course overhaul over the summer without compensation (but also no loss of IP) thanks to the tireless work of our Writing Center, our Center for Teaching and Learning, and our IT staff. I am very lucky.
And to repeat what I said in a branch of this thread: if we aren’t citing in our syllabi in a time of pandemic & uprising, we KNOW who will be disproportionately silenced: those who have labored more tirelessly & thanklessly against the largest institutional blockades.
Or as a better scholar than I am put it: https://twitter.com/profgabrielle/status/1280135596091027456?s=21 https://twitter.com/profgabrielle/status/1280135596091027456
