How much do you share (teaching materials)?

[Ruralguy]

My college has some odd statement in the handbook that they have rights to our products, but journals I publish in all have full rights to the articles, and I believe most publishers have rights to the books they publish, and then hand over royalties for handing them the product.

[Antiphon1]

I share everything except the lecture videos.  Most of my materials are a collection of documents, tests, questions, activities and various other teaching aids I've build over the past 25+ years.  As others noted, it's not as if you couldn't find this stuff online.  However, our very green adjuncts need a framework.  I actively encourage them to find the instructional shape that best suits their style and interests rather than using my class as a plug and chug requirement.  To be clear, I change most materials every semester after I sweep the online materials sharing sites. The only requirements our department insists on are the required assignments and tests.  Quite a few of my colleagues at other schools learned to teach using their mentor's materials.  It's a time honored method of passing down discipline specific expectations. 

[jerseyjay]

For very convoluted reasons (involving a sabbatical, staff changes, administrative changes) I ended up teaching a course this semester that I have never taught before in a department that I am not a full-time member of. The course was custome-designed by a professor to reflect their own research interest that is not mine. The usual professor gave me their syllabus (which contains details on the assignments), pdfs of the readings, and access to their Blackboard shell (the course is not online). I ended up adapting their material, but it was very useful to not have to start from scratch. I will probably never teach the course again, but if I did I would probably not use their course out of the box.

On the one hand, I would tend to be generous in giving my materials--especially if the class is not a typical course. On the other had,  since I do not generally use PowerPoint in class, the most I could really give somebody is my syllabus and copies of the readings I assign. I would be more than happy to sit down and talk to anybody who was taking over the class.

When my department has hired adjuncts to teach courses for the first time, we usually give them the syllabi, and talk to them about the course, including giving them a sense of the requirements (e.g., you MUST cover A and MUST give assignment B but there is flexibility in X and Y). I am always happy to talk to somebody about what has worked or not worked in the past, and to give any suggestions.

This may be discipline specific; I think there is more variation in how to teach many history courses than there is to teach intro-level math or language courses.

[Kron3007]

I also share everything.  It seems crazy to expect someone filling in or adjuncting to do full course development.  It is a waste of time, and they are likely not being compensated for it.

Every time I have filled in I have been provided with the previous instructors slides etc   Even with materials, there is enough prep work. I recently declined covering a course specifically because there were no materials, just not worth the work.

[marshwiggle]

Thanks for the initial discussion. General consensus appears to be to just send it. It's going to take a bit as I use a variety of different media, but I'm working on it. My voice-of-reason colleague thought the request was too much, but I do want this to be a successful experience for faculty member and students alike.  Most of the videos will obviously be associated with me as they involve me and my TAs, with occasional guest appearances by my husband (who was helping during COVID times), and my cats.

The cats should probably sign a waiver.

[the_geneticist]

I teach labs and share everything with the summer instructors- syllabus, assignments, grading guides, instructor notes, lab manual, lab prep checklists, etc.

It's unrealistic to expect the summer adjunct to design new labs (or to reverse engineer the existing labs).  It's a heavy enough lift to teach the existing materials!

[marshwiggle]

I teach labs and share everything with the summer instructors- syllabus, assignments, grading guides, instructor notes, lab manual, lab prep checklists, etc.

It's unrealistic to expect the summer adjunct to design new labs (or to reverse engineer the existing labs).  It's a heavy enough lift to teach the existing materials!

Especially with labs, some of the details are so idiosyncratic to the institutional infrastructure that even if there was a concern about someone "stealing" the material to use elsewhere, it would largely be misplaced since the labs from one place would hardly be any better somewhere else than the kind of "generic" labs that are online and/or are provided by equipment manufacturers.

[the_geneticist]

I teach labs and share everything with the summer instructors- syllabus, assignments, grading guides, instructor notes, lab manual, lab prep checklists, etc.

It's unrealistic to expect the summer adjunct to design new labs (or to reverse engineer the existing labs).  It's a heavy enough lift to teach the existing materials!

Especially with labs, some of the details are so idiosyncratic to the institutional infrastructure that even if there was a concern about someone "stealing" the material to use elsewhere, it would largely be misplaced since the labs from one place would hardly be any better somewhere else than the kind of "generic" labs that are online and/or are provided by equipment manufacturers.

Indeed!  Plus, there are LOTS of existing labs on common topics (e.g. enzymes, DNA extraction, osmosis, etc.) that I can't really say I created any of these.  It's all a variation on a theme that's tweaked to fit my curriculum & students & logistics.

[Caracal]

I'm always happy to share anything. The vast majority of my teaching materials aren't original anyway. Even lectures I put together "from scratch" usually involve borrowing of central ideas, examples and sometimes structure from a book. In my survey courses a lot of my stuff started from a friend's materials he gave to me when I started teaching. I've modified it a lot over the years, but there's still plenty of things that come straight from my friend's stuff, which he probably got from various other places himself.

The point is, I don't really think of these as original materials. Nobody is going to want to copy my class, but the hard part when you're a new instructor is starting from scratch every week. If some of my stuff makes someone's life a little easier, that's no skin off my back.

[marshwiggle]

The point is, I don't really think of these as original materials. Nobody is going to want to copy my class, but the hard part when you're a new instructor is starting from scratch every week. If some of my stuff makes someone's life a little easier, that's no skin off my back.

The flip side of this is also true. I have dates on all of my lecture documents, and it's rare to find one that hasn't been edited in a decade, even within the same course. So any materials that an instructor starts out with, of their own or from someone else, is likely to evolve over a few years to be substantially different. I'd say this is especially true of assignments, projects, etc. as instructors have very individualized ideas of what they're looking for and how they evaluate.

[Caracal]

The point is, I don't really think of these as original materials. Nobody is going to want to copy my class, but the hard part when you're a new instructor is starting from scratch every week. If some of my stuff makes someone's life a little easier, that's no skin off my back.

The flip side of this is also true. I have dates on all of my lecture documents, and it's rare to find one that hasn't been edited in a decade, even within the same course. So any materials that an instructor starts out with, of their own or from someone else, is likely to evolve over a few years to be substantially different. I'd say this is especially true of assignments, projects, etc. as instructors have very individualized ideas of what they're looking for and how they evaluate.

Yeah, exactly, a few years ago, the friend I originally got a lot of my stuff from was teaching one of the courses again for the first time in a few years and asked me to send him my stuff. He mentioned that it was strange to see lots of recognizable elements of his old lectures repackaged in really different form with lots of new stuff.

And yeah, I do tend to create my own projects and assignments from scratch. Occasionally, there's something that works well and I use it with only small modifications, but usually I can't find things that really fit with what I want students to do.

[the_geneticist]

I do create all my own assignments and exams (and draw all my own figures).  It was SO HARD as a new instructor when the other instructors shared just a syllabus.  Especially with vague items like "GMO organisms" as the topic for an entire week; or left lab prep notes like "Dr. [other person] will provide the [essential materials]".

[Kron3007]

It also strikes me as odd that anyone would to be concerned bout their teaching content being out there, meanwhile many of us pay publishing companies to do just that.   

[Aster]

Teaching materials only? Not assessments?
If it's a general course with publisher support, I'll either refer the professor to the publisher, or pass along the canned junk that the publisher sent me.

If it's a different kind of course, I'll take a more nuanced approach. I might provide full notes, at least initially. A lot depends on who is asking, and what they are asking for. Small asks are usually not a problem. But anyone who flat-out asks me for *everything* is professionally signalling to me that I really should do the complete opposite. I have a very low professional opinion (based on firsthand experience) for professors asking me for everything. If you're asking for everything, you're either 1) a noob who is new to the profession (in which case I'll try to mentor you), or 2) you're too lazy/uncaring to do a good job teaching the course (so heck no, I am most definitely not enabling your slacker butt), or 3. you're not qualified to teach the class. Eeek to that!

[the_geneticist]

Teaching materials only? Not assessments?
If it's a general course with publisher support, I'll either refer the professor to the publisher, or pass along the canned junk that the publisher sent me.

If it's a different kind of course, I'll take a more nuanced approach. I might provide full notes, at least initially. A lot depends on who is asking, and what they are asking for. Small asks are usually not a problem. But anyone who flat-out asks me for *everything* is professionally signalling to me that I really should do the complete opposite. I have a very low professional opinion (based on firsthand experience) for professors asking me for everything. If you're asking for everything, you're either 1) a noob who is new to the profession (in which case I'll try to mentor you), or 2) you're too lazy/uncaring to do a good job teaching the course (so heck no, I am most definitely not enabling your slacker butt), or 3. you're not qualified to teach the class. Eeek to that!

We hire graduate students to teach our summer courses.  I do give them everything.  They are always shocked at how much "behind the scenes" planning, logistics, and organizing it takes to run a good class.  Like, you really should have most of the final presentation rubric written before day 1.