Last updated on August 12, 2014
I received the following email last week:
Dear Professor Bellemare,
I noticed that you taught the course “Microeconomics of International Development Policy” while at Duke which I find very appealing. Your course’s content online appears to overlap to some extent with an applied development policy course that I will begin teaching at [university name redacted] as a part-time fellow next academic term. As this is the first time I am teaching this course and thus have no course materials and also have many other time commitments … I wanted to ask you if you may be willing to provide a large favor and possibly share and forward your class presentations that I could use as a point of orientation to prepare the specific content of my class presentations?
I would be extremely grateful if this may be possible as it would help me not to start completely from scratch and I would of course be willing to offer a favour in return (for example, I could share [data sets] if these may be relevant for you, as I have worked with [institution redacted] over the past five years and have most of these data sets …). And I could of course forward you the presentations for this course once they are prepared.
I very much look forward to your response and would be very thankful if we could find a solution.
Best,
[Name redacted]
I hesitated before writing this post, but after discussing it with a colleague with whom I was in the field last week, he suggested that it could make for a good “teachable moment.” Besides, there so many unwritten rules in academia that I thought I should at least try to make this one explicit to current graduate students and newly minted PhDs. Maybe this is a rule only to me; if so, I’d like to hear from colleagues about how they view situations such as this one, in the comments section below.
The rule has two parts:
- Develop your own teaching materials as much as you can. Relying on someone else’s slide will make for sub-standard teaching on your part, and you owe your students better. One important exception to this rule is if you use a textbook that comes with very good slides from the publisher.* For example, when teaching undergraduate micro, I use Greg Mankiw’s textbook and the excellent slides that come with it, because whoever made those slides did a good job of showing how budget constraints rotate, how short-term cost curves can illustrate the Envelope Theorem, etc. much better than I can. (And with the number of textbooks I help the publisher sell, it’s only fair that I should get something in return.)
- You can ask someone else for their teaching materials if that person was one of your advisors or one of your classmates. Otherwise, don’t be surprised if the person whose materials you ask for refuses. In Canadian French, we have an expression that nicely illustrates how certain things are only acceptable between close friends and colleagues or between people who have shared the same hardships: “It’s not like we raised pigs together.”
Also, as a side note, being “too busy” is more often than not an excuse in academia, where everyone is busy all the time.
* Don’t do this if you are at a liberal arts college, however. In that case, students rightly expect you to prepare your own materials that will be tailored to them.
The best courses I’ve taught were derived from a close reading of the textbook and papers/readings assigned, syllabi from numerous similar courses, someone else’ lecture notes, and my own. I’ve been told to use the CASE method (Copy and Steal Everything), but I’ve seen that the best teachers will take anything that’s given to them and make it their own. Even when I’ve used someone else’ slides (like when I teach autocorrelation, for instance), I adapt, make them own, read a lot so that I can speak to them articulately, etc. I agree with you that the email was a bit gauche given that you’re not connected in some other way, but I also think that starting from scratch isn’t necessarily the best method. Content isn’t always generalizable across institutions (a course I taught at Colorado was taught very differently at Gettysburg, for instance), but the fact is that a lot of people have taught these things before me and figured out good ways to do it. So, I’d say there’s a balance.
I think you’re being a little harsh here. The emailer asks to use your notes as a point of reference. I agree completely that a professor has to create their own lecture notes but there is absolutely no harm in seeing what others have done and borrowing the parts that you like best. As a young professor I’ve had numerous senior faculty members generously share their lecture materials with. I rarely end up using what they send but it is always useful to see what others are doing and get ideas.
I do not see anything wrong about the email that you received. In my view, you need not doubt to send him your lecture notes if you believe they are good. I have shared my lecture notes for quite a few colleagues and for others too, and borrowed a few from my colleagues too. Nevertheless, it does not mean that I take their notes (or they take mine) in their entirety but as a point of reference. This, I think, improves the quality of the lecture that your students get as it will be additional to whatever you would prepare for them by yourself.
I have to agree with Marc here. Course materials are intellectual property. I think it is unprofessional to ask someone for their slides unless they are a colleague, advisor or classmate. And if they are a colleague, be very clear about the quid pro quo, or don’t ask in the first place.
However, I think it is fine for someone to ask to see the course plan (syllabus), as this request is about the big picture.
Lastly, if the concern is that the emailer will just use the slides as-is, a possibility would be to email him or her a pdf scan of a photocopy of the slides, making them unusable for presentation.
My humble opinion would be that “the rule” in this case is a synonym of “my rule”. It is one’s freedom to decide whether or not to lend the teaching materials, given that they are not publicly available — just like what you do with anything else you own.
That being said, to refuse lending these materials simply for the reason “intellectual property” is untenable. In fact, when a researcher — one like the author himself — writes a paper, he/she will extensively borrow (or cite) other people’s “intellectual property”. It is highly unlikely that all those works are created solely by his/her advisers and classmates.
Of course, that those people agree to publish (or share) their works is precisely why the researcher is able to cite them. And the whole argument goes back to my first paragraph.