To the Editor:
As a teacher of a fairly large biology course, BIOL 0530: "Principles of Immunology," I read the article about a note-sharing site ("Students pilot note-sharing site," March 2) with interest. Like the students proposing the Brown Scholars Club website, I want students to be able to pay attention to the substance of what is being discussed in my classes without being worried about scribbling down everything on the screen — this is why I make copies of my lecture slides available. Someone in my position might ask, "They have the slides, what else do they need?" However, one of the things I love most about Brown is the active role that students play in the educational process — one needs only to look to the undergraduates who serve courses with distinction as teaching assistants and in the various peer advising and counseling programs, while others work long hours behind the scenes to maintain vital campus resources such as Mocha, the Critical Review and The Herald. It makes sense then that there would be a student-maintained website devoted to course material, however in doing so some important issues need to be considered, not all of them addressed in the article. To illustrate, while variable note quality, the ethical implications of the notes enabling class-skipping and potential Academic Code issues were all discussed, what surprised me was that the University's interests were not directly addressed — was the General Counsel's office solicited for an opinion? What about the thoughts of some of the faculty who produce the course material that the notes would be based upon? While it's true that you "own" the knowledge that you acquire in your classes, as one quotation suggested, that does not convey ownership of the materials used to teach it to you. Your class notes are your own, and you can certainly do with them what you will — but if you post content to a commercial site that includes material that I produced such as images or text from my slides or questions from my exams and written assignments, then I do have a problem with it, and I suspect that the University will, too.
Richard Bungiro PhD'99
Professor of Biology
