a presentation by Dr. Lori Dawson, Professor of Psychology and Teagle Assessment Scholar at Worcester State University, 11/18/2016
Co-sponsored with the General Education Assessment Committee
Faculty and staff participated in a workshop on creating student learning outcomes (SLOs) for courses and programs. Using multiple methods and factors including Bloom's Taxonomy and the dimensions of knowledge and cognitive process, Dr. Lori Dawson, Professor of Psychology and Teagle Assessment Scholar at Worcester State University, explained how faculty can better assess and evaluate teaching and student learning using SLOs. She also discussed how a list of the top 10 desired skills of employers can be communicated and applied in learning goals and corresponding SLOs.
(reported by Jennifer Adams of the HCC Library and PDC member.)
a presentation by Heath Hatch, a practicing attorney and an award winning physics lecturer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, 11/9/2016
The recent requirement by HCC to have all printed material
to be disseminated to students first checked for copyright infringement has led
to many questions across the campus. What is copyright? Under what
circumstances would copyright be violated? How can copyright violation be
avoided while keeping the cost of student materials down?
On November 9, Heath
Hatch, a UMass physics lecturer and former lawyer joined HCC faculty and staff
to educate us on this subject area. Copyright is a form of protection to an
author’s expression of an idea. The original expression of the idea is
protected for the lifetime of that author plus an additional 70 years.
Copyright does NOT protect the idea itself (i.e. formulas, discovery of science
are not copyrightable); however, the expression of that idea IS. As soon as an
author transcribes this idea, it is considered copyrighted—even if it is not
registered nor explicitly states that it is copyrighted. Thus, if an HCC
faculty member takes another lecturer’s slides, written work, or pictures to
disseminate to their students, he has violated the original author’s copyright.
Simply citing the source of the work does not avoid copyright infringement. Although
that HCC faculty member may not be at risk of being prosecuted as he can claim
fair use—that he was using it solely for teaching purposes--the larger
institution (HCC) may be at risk. Thus, HCC wants to protect the institution as
a whole from future violations that could lead to their prosecution.
What can
HCC faculty and staff do to avoid copyright violation? Well, they could follow
the route suggested by submitting all printed work to Xanedu who assures the
original authors are properly compensated. To keep costs down, a link to
outside articles could be posted on a course Moodle site (Note-while posting
PDF’s of the article does violate copyright, links do not). They could also
search for Public Domain works which include any material produced through
state and federal funding as this material has been produced with the intention
of others using it for free.
(reported by Emily Rabinsky, biology faculty member and PDC member.)
WATCH: Copyright on Campus for a good overview of points covered in presentation