Do I Need to Hand Over All Course Materials to Part-Time Faculty?

Do I Need to Hand Over All Course Materials to Part-Time Faculty?

It has come to the union’s attention that the practice of administrators directing PT Faculty to contact the FT Faculty (who may be teaching the same course/have taught it in the past and/or are currently developing and offering it) with the assumption that the FT faculty will share all course materials and/or meet with the faculty is occurring.

Faculty sometimes feel that they should provide their materials because:

  1. The administration is asking for their materials.
  2. They have been told that sharing their materials will maintain the integrity of the course.
  3. They have been told it is in the best interest of the students.

At the same time faculty have felt copyright ownership over materials they have created that reflects their personal and professional experiences in industry prior to or in conjunction to teaching at the college.

As your union representatives we would like to reiterate what our rights are in accordance with the Collective Agreement:

Article 13 “Copyright” (Page 29 of the CA) states that “a work commissioned by the college or produced pursuant to the employee’s normal administrative or professional duties with the college, shall be and remain the property of the college. Other works produced by an employee shall be and remain the property of the employee.  Nothing contained herein shall adversely affect any rights an employee may have under the Copyright Act (Canada) and in particular the subsection addressing “work made in the course of employment”.

The union’s position is that we have very competent and highly qualified faculty with expertise who work hard to ensure that course materials are pedagogically sound and reflective of real world practice. The expectation is that anyone hired as a part-time faculty also has competence, is highly qualified, and has expertise with the capability to effectively develop their own course materials for their own use.

The college has stated its commitment to the academic integrity of our programs. If full-time faculty are asked to mentor or assist part-time faculty, the time for doing so must be reflected on the SWF, in accordance with Article 11.

We hope that this article provides you with some helpful guidelines to consider in this matter.