How much do you share (teaching materials)?

[Caracal]

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.

Haha. I mean sorry, I mean, of course, yeah, I mean who wouldn't do that...I'm never just barely keeping up with the students.

[Antiphon1]

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!

Au contraire, mon ami.  I just took over a class for a, ahem, collegue who, 1) quit mid semester, 2) left no materials or syllabus, and 3) despite a pretty flashy class site was actually doing nothing - no grades, assignments, assessments, nothing.  So, yes, I'd rather everyone did their own work.  However, failing that pretty low expectation, I'll give you my stuff if you'll just do something.  Oh, and, thanks a hell of a lot for leaving me holding the damn bag. 

[marshwiggle]

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!

Au contraire, mon ami.  I just took over a class for a, ahem, collegue who, 1) quit mid semester, 2) left no materials or syllabus, and 3) despite a pretty flashy class site was actually doing nothing - no grades, assignments, assessments, nothing.  So, yes, I'd rather everyone did their own work.  However, failing that pretty low expectation, I'll give you my stuff if you'll just do something.  Oh, and, thanks a hell of a lot for leaving me holding the damn bag.

Not quite that bad, but that's close to what happened to me. (Prof retired just before term started, and I got called in to teach a course with 300+ students. The textbook hadn't been ordered, and all of the prof's notes and assignments were based on the previous textbook edition of about a decade ago.) When I vowed I didn't want to teach it again I passed all of my stuff along to the new prof, including my suggestions of ways I though it could be improved to avoid the pitfalls I fell into.

Several years ago the same thing happened, when the person lined up to teach the course bailed a couple of weeks before class started and I got hooked into it.  (In both cases, because I did the labs for the course, I knew more about it than anyone else remaining in the department.)

[Caracal]

Au contraire, mon ami.  I just took over a class for a, ahem, collegue who, 1) quit mid semester, 2) left no materials or syllabus, and 3) despite a pretty flashy class site was actually doing nothing - no grades, assignments, assessments, nothing.  So, yes, I'd rather everyone did their own work.  However, failing that pretty low expectation, I'll give you my stuff if you'll just do something.  Oh, and, thanks a hell of a lot for leaving me holding the damn bag.

I'm having one of those days where I feel bad about my teaching and worry that I'm just phoning it in and this story makes me feel much better. 

[Puget]

I've always shared freely and benefited from sharing by others. Like others here have written, I really don't see teaching materials as proprietary in any way. Teaching prep is hard and time consuming, so why not all help each other out when we can? 

[Aster]

Yeah. Um. Emergencies are exceptions. I'm pretty sure that's applicable to any context.

[the_geneticist]

The times I don't share more than a syllabus is when I get odd requests from folks that don't work at my university and they want everything and I don't know them.
There was a high school teacher who wanted ALL of my lab materials- syllabus, assignments, lab manual, prep notes,  exams, etc.  Supposedly to "best prepare his students for college". 
Or students that want all assignments at the start of the quarter.  Nope.  Not how this works.  You get assignments when you are actually doing the lab.

[Caracal]

The times I don't share more than a syllabus is when I get odd requests from folks that don't work at my university and they want everything and I don't know them.
There was a high school teacher who wanted ALL of my lab materials- syllabus, assignments, lab manual, prep notes,  exams, etc.  Supposedly to "best prepare his students for college". 

In those situations I'd be more concerned that someone is uploading all my stuff to some weird site, or trying to use it to advance some anti woke professor agenda, or something. I'm obviously not trying to keep my teaching materials secret and I'm happy to share them, but I wouldn't really want them to be publicly available with a search of my name. There's the occasional embarrassing typo in slides I forget to correct every year and my visual design skills are probably not going to win me any awards.

[EdnaMode]

I'm the coordinator for two core engineering courses and I teach around half of the offered sections. These courses serve as the prereq for other courses in three majors. So, whenever I update the course significantly, or when we have to bring in an adjunct, I provide the instructors with a shell in Canvas, outlines of all the lectures with the topics that must be addressed, and copies of the "how to do [whatever]" handouts I make for standard lab procedures that the faculty in the School have decided is the way certain basic things should always be done for continuity. I even include in Canvas which weeks exams should be given and the general topics they should address. Everyone makes their own exams – if someone is brand new to teaching, I give them a few of my old exams just to show how I do things, and other instructors of the courses may share theirs too. We do this for continuity because when hundreds of students are taking a course that is a prereq for another course (or courses), we need to have pretty similar outcomes.

Related to that, in the coming fall, I'll be teaching a course that has content in it that I have not taught, nor had to do professionally in consulting, for years. The professor who used to teach it can't because he'll be teaching a class formerly taught by a colleague who is retiring. I was incredibly grateful when my colleague gave me a copy of his entire class shell in Canvas and also copies of all the lab assignments he regularly does. Now, I may change up some of the assignments over the summer, and switch things around a bit in Canvas, but I am very happy I do not need to reinvent this course from the ground up and that he was willing to share all his materials.

[jerseyjay]

I was incredibly grateful when my colleague gave me a copy of his entire class shell in Canvas and also copies of all the lab assignments he regularly does. Now, I may change up some of the assignments over the summer, and switch things around a bit in Canvas, but I am very happy I do not need to reinvent this course from the ground up and that he was willing to share all his materials.

I think this is key: not whether somebody asks for course materials but what they do with them. If I am teaching a course that somebody else developed and that is not something I've taught before, I always ask for as much material as possible. But then I modify it. I always assumed most competent professors did something similar.

[Kron3007]

The times I don't share more than a syllabus is when I get odd requests from folks that don't work at my university and they want everything and I don't know them.
There was a high school teacher who wanted ALL of my lab materials- syllabus, assignments, lab manual, prep notes,  exams, etc.  Supposedly to "best prepare his students for college". 

In those situations I'd be more concerned that someone is uploading all my stuff to some weird site, or trying to use it to advance some anti woke professor agenda, or something. I'm obviously not trying to keep my teaching materials secret and I'm happy to share them, but I wouldn't really want them to be publicly available with a search of my name. There's the occasional embarrassing typo in slides I forget to correct every year and my visual design skills are probably not going to win me any awards.

Yeah, I may be a little more reluctant for external requests. I would likely still share, but there would be more variables involved in if/what I provided. 

Internally, I can also see a few exceptions.  For example, our university has been in discussions with Navitas, a for-profit corporation that partners with universities to deliver online programs in some fashion.  It is my understanding that sharing our course materials with them to develop such courses is optional.  In this situation, I think it warrants more thought and research before sharing...   

[larryc]

I have routinely shared my entire teaching folder for a class with a new instructor. Syllabi, lectures, slides, tests, PowerPoint, all of it. It seems petty to do anything less.

[history_grrrl]

It's funny. When I first started teaching, I was very proprietary about my lectures and slides. A friend, also just starting out a few years later, asked for these materials and I was very reluctant. I shared but then let her know I was very uncomfortable about it. She thought I was accusing her of simply using my stuff, and in fact our friendship ended over that. I have deep regret over it, not least because I now realize what I gave her was crap: just litanies of factoids gathered from various texts because I didn't really know what I was doing and was scrambling to cobble my classes together. So stupid. So much a reflection of my own insecurities.

When I saw this thread, I thought, now I would share anything. It's ironic, because my lectures and other materials are so much more polished as the result of a massive amount of work on my part, and so much a reflection of my own knowledge and perspective - and yet I would be pleased if others found them helpful, along with the many resources I've developed for students over the years. When I retire, I would certainly consider handing everything over to my replacement.

[jerseyjay]

.... I now realize what I gave her was crap: just litanies of factoids gathered from various texts because I didn't really know what I was doing and was scrambling to cobble my classes together. ...

....my lectures and other materials are so much more polished as the result of a massive amount of work on my part, and so much a reflection of my own knowledge and perspective ....

I find this interesting because for me the exact opposite is true. When I began teaching more than 20 years ago, my notes were much more detailed than now. Now, when I teach a course for the first time, my notes are often detailed outlines of what I want to talk about, including specific facts. However, after I've taught a course several times, or if I am teaching a subject that I am more familiar with, my notes are often just a few key words to remind me to bring up certain subjects, or remember the exact dates of stuff or how to spell people's names.

Thus, if a colleague asked me for my materials for (say) my history of the United States in the 20th century, I would probably give them just the syllabus, copies of assignments, and some readings; not because I am trying to Bogart anything, but because it is all I have.

I am not saying my way is best, but it did strike me as the opposite of history_grrrl (who, I assume, is also a historian).

[Kron3007]

.... I now realize what I gave her was crap: just litanies of factoids gathered from various texts because I didn't really know what I was doing and was scrambling to cobble my classes together. ...

....my lectures and other materials are so much more polished as the result of a massive amount of work on my part, and so much a reflection of my own knowledge and perspective ....

I find this interesting because for me the exact opposite is true. When I began teaching more than 20 years ago, my notes were much more detailed than now. Now, when I teach a course for the first time, my notes are often detailed outlines of what I want to talk about, including specific facts. However, after I've taught a course several times, or if I am teaching a subject that I am more familiar with, my notes are often just a few key words to remind me to bring up certain subjects, or remember the exact dates of stuff or how to spell people's names.

Thus, if a colleague asked me for my materials for (say) my history of the United States in the 20th century, I would probably give them just the syllabus, copies of assignments, and some readings; not because I am trying to Bogart anything, but because it is all I have.

I am not saying my way is best, but it did strike me as the opposite of history_grrrl (who, I assume, is also a historian).

This also highlights the difference in fields to me.  For me, teaching material would generally include full PowerPoint slides for each lecture etc.  Most STEM fields would be the same, as I can't imagine teaching my subject without them.  They take a long time to prep and can be easily edited, so sharing them is a huge help for the next prof.

Still, it always amazes me how much work it needed to teach from someone else's slides.