If a MOOC instructor moves, who keeps the intellectual property rights?

Posted on March 15th, 2014

Sanjay E. Sarma, director of digital learning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), recently announced that MIT will introduce an interpretation of its intellectual property policy to address MOOCs. According to Sarma, if MIT faculty members who have created MOOCs with significant use of MIT’s resources leave MIT, they still own their rights to teach their course elsewhere, though without the produced recordings. MIT keeps that footage, as well as a license to continue the MOOC based on the course materials it helped produce. In contrast, Duke University appears to equate MOOCs with face-to-face courses. Cathy N. Davidson, who taught a MOOC via Coursera this spring, recently announced she would leave Duke for the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Regarding the intellectual property of the MOOC, Davidson stated “I own my own course content, no one at Duke (or anywhere) can teach with my videos without my permission. I can reuse my videos and course materials at CUNY, but need to acknowledge that they were produced at Duke.”

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/03/18/if-mooc-instructor-moves-who-keeps-intellectual-property-rights