The Faculty Federation has been approached by some faculty for advice regarding offers of financial compensation for providing copies of their course materials, such as study guides and lecture notes. These offers are coming from companies such as Chegg, CourseHero, Quizlet, and other “test preparation and homework assistance” groups.

There are two major concerns with faculty doing this. The first involves the use of copyrighted material in the course notes. Many faculty do this under the “fair use” doctrine for educational purposes. However, once the lecture notes are sold for profit, the faculty member would owe licensing fees to the copyright owner of any material used. Textbook publishing company lawyers are hunting for faculty who sell instructor materials to these sites and they will sue for violation of fair use and copyright laws.

The other concern is that this would be akin to teaching the course at another college — and faculty cannot teach a course elsewhere if it is the same course that they teach at UMass Dartmouth. This situation has arisen in the past and University counsel’s advice has been that doing this was a violation of state ethics laws , i.e., it is a conflict of interest. The Federation’s counsel concurs with this advice. The argument is that while the course material is, and remains, the intellectual property of the faculty member, it was developed for use at a state agency using state resources, which
means profiting from its use with another agency is a conflict of interest. It is likely that the same argument would apply in the case of a faculty member who sells their course material to Chegg or similar agents.

As with any activities done outside of UMass Dartmouth, faculty are required to disclose these to the University. From Article VIII(M)(2)(c)(2) of the contract:

Activities Involving a Conflict of Interest –
In the event a Faculty Member is considering undertaking an Out-
side Activity that poses an actual or potential Conflict of Interest,
as defined by the University Policy on Conflicts of Interest Relating
to Intellectual Property and Commercial Ventures, the Faculty
member should disclose all relevant information as required by
that Policy.

Given the potential for significant legal issues that could arise from
selling course materials to these “test preparation and homework
assistance” companies, the Federation strongly discourages faculty
from doing this.

-by Grant O’Rielly, Faculty Federation president