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Senate discusses videotaping in classroom
By MARY COCHRANE
Contributing Editor
It's not unusual these days to videotape university professors as they teach classes.
What is unusual—and what is emerging as a problem for some UB professors—is having classes videotaped without the instructors' permission.
The Faculty Senate Executive Committee discussed such videotaping yesterday, following a presentation by Jeffrey A. Dunbar, director of science, technology transfer and economic outreach, who outlined copyright and intellectual property policies at UB.
Faculty Senate Chair Peter Nickerson, director of the pathology graduate program in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, said he invited Dunbar to speak because of the "number of issues related to intellectual property that we need to become more aware of.
"The issue first arose when someone from the medical school told me that they were being videotaped against their will," Nickerson said. "This is for undergraduate studies. It was the administrators who have said they must have this videotape so that we can expand the number of students who have access to what you are doing."
Peter G. Bradford, associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology, who also has had his classes videotaped without his permission, said he realized during a recent class that two students also were videotaping him using their cell phones. His remarks prompted others present to warn him that he "will be on YouTube next week."
Nickerson said re-using courses that have been videotaped—something that the University at Albany is doing with a German course, taught by a professor who has since passed away—ultimately could eliminate the need for faculty.
"It could go on forever and ever and we don't need faculty," he said.
A class in the medical school that has been "oversubscribed" is currently being videotaped, then shown to multiple sections of students because they can't all be seated in the same classroom at once, according to Nickerson.
"Now, that's not a good idea, mainly because the students can't ask questions. But we'll certainly be able to take their tuition and also be sure the students have their course. Is it a good idea to do that from an educational point of view? No. But if the administration is saying you must do this, how do you get around that?"
Barbara Rittner, director of the doctoral program and associate dean for external affairs in the School of Social Work, said she sees two issues resulting from such videotaping.
"The fact that you're physically present in a classroom vs. providing a revenue-generating course is a workload issue," Rittner said. "I just think that the assumption that somebody who is watching the course on film doesn't get the same experience as somebody sitting in the classroom is not necessarily always true."
Rittner considers the second issue—using someone's image without their permission—as "actually pretty serious."
"If you're not comfortable being filmed and you don't want your course presented that way, it seems to me there needs to be a sort of faculty/decanal discussion needed. I think that's a governance issue," Rittner said.
Satish Tripathi, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, agreed, noting that several schools, including the School of Management, make use of online or videotape courses where "only a fraction of the students are actually in the classroom." The first issue, of "whether the online course has a good impact, has value or not," can be determined through class monitoring.
"That's a separate issue. The other one is whether somebody is doing something without somebody's permission. As a faculty member, you should talk to the chair and the dean," he said.
John Krasney, professor of physiology and biophysics, said the medical school administration has cited limited classroom capacity as the reason for videotaping of courses. Krasney, who teaches physiology 300, "a large course," was told the class enrollment was limited to 430 students because "the capacity of Diefendorf 147 is 430 students."
"That's my limit in the spring," he said. "It was put to me that we can do digital video capture, so the overflow of students could then go in the second room, which I think is not pedagogically sound at all. First of all, they are not going to be in the main room and there were complaints about attendance and so on.
Like Rittner, Krasney is more concerned with having videotapes of his classes available across the Internet.
"The other issue is, do we have a right to refuse having our lectures videotaped?," he said.
"There are two faculty members, probably three, who are vigorously objecting to this. There's no clear policy. Personally, I think if you don't want to be videotaped, you shouldn't be videotaped. The other issue is then these lectures are uploaded to UB Learns. Students can then access them, they can either watch streaming video or they can download them onto their computers. There I am, there's my lecture on their computers. God knows what they are going to do with them. It smacks of the 'rate your professor' site, which has gotten totally out of hand. Students are taking their cameras and putting your picture up there."
Bradford wondered whether UB and its faculty fall under New York State's Technology Policy 97.1, which states that "anything, information such as data, electronic mail documents and software, are all agency assets, with agency being New York State."
Dunbar was unsure how the policy applies to UB, but said the videotaping issue is an example of why ownership and protection policies need to keep pace with the times.
"I think the evolution of the policies are reflected in the advancement of technology. As technology comes in, it's perhaps time to sit down and look at developing some clarification that takes the current policies and puts them together for that specific purpose," Dunbar said.
Following a proposal that the Faculty Senate draft a policy regarding the issue of videotaping courses at UB, Nickerson suggested the senate reactivate its academic freedom committee to take such action.
"That makes sense for us to do," he said.