For the past few months, a group of UCD faculty and staff have been working on a set of recommendations regarding instructional technology.  While the report hasn't been issued, discussions at the last meeting of the Campus Council for Information Technology (CCFIT) revealed that one of the very top concerns expressed by faculty about using online instructional technology regarded copyright and intellectual property. 

As in most things copyright, especially in higher education, the answer to the question of "Who owns this thing I did?"  is always, and frustratingly, "It depends."   Moreover, the faculty perception is that the answer varies with who you ask.

While there is UC and ANR policy about this stuff (yes, we're different here, too!) applying it is not easy.  Also, recent efforts to establish more comprehensive UC policy and make scholarly publishing and the use of copyrighted materials in the classroom more transparent appear to be stalled.  We do have more important things to worry about right at this moment.

However, it is just when everything seems to be on the table that we have an opportunity to support the academic quality of UC, increase the visibiity of scholarly publications, expand our service to California and the nation, and articulate the Strategic Vision we discussed so productively at the recent statewide conference.  If expanded online program delivery is really part of our future, these issues are important to us as well.

I'll try to keep you posted. 

Here's the link to the web site of the CCFIT.  http://ccfit.ucdavis.edu/index.cfm

There is a great deal of good stuff here on IT planning and governance and I'm grateful that UCD CIO Pete Seigel has asked me to serve on this committee.  Pete came to UCD from Illinois and he really does get the land grant mission and the role of the experiment station/cooperative extension continuum.

Bob