For the past weeks, I suspected some professors in school use my perl material without crediting or mentioning me. Ofcourse they only teach it for about an hour but still, my name was on those slides and in that text and it is gone now. I mailed one of those professors three weeks ago and she denied she used large portions. I do believe her and I have only hearsay. Now I have discovered slides and text in the public directory of another professor that is clearly a rip. She cut in the slides and text but everything else is just the way it was... except for my name. It's all a rather delicat matter since I still officially have to graduate. Neither of those professors are taking exams from me but they are still in the grade meeting and still can turn things around when it turns out my grades are not sufficient. It's not like I earned any money out of that material but I can't really neglect it either.
Having been a teaching assistant at a University here in the U.S., I don't think I would include credits within slides I used to teach a class. There's a certain amount of elitism (if that's the right word) you want to maintain as a teacher. In other words, you want the students to think you're a genius. If you include the credits, you might lose some (or a lot) of respect within your students eyes as "a guy who steals code".
Now, with *that* said, if I were a professor I wouldn't use code from one of my own graduate students (I'm only guessing that's what you are - I'm not sure if the term translates) without their prior approval. I sure as hell wouldn't deny using their code. That's where I think the ethical breach has occurred.
Academics are fond of endlessly preaching about how student plagiarism is the worst thing since smallpox. I think we should apply the same approach to faculty plagiarism and see how they like "being made an example of".
How many slides were "borrowed"? Only one one or two or the whole course?
Remember that after you've graduated, you'll still be the author of the text, after all. And also that "Les conseilleurs ne sont les payeurs" (sorry, don't know how to translate it correctly).
Re:What's the size of it?
Beatnik on 2003-06-03T09:46:39
Well, the course I did last year had a 10 page introduction text, slides to go along (around 10 slides), a short reference text (2-3 pages) and some practical stuff... 'Their' material has one or two slides missing but everything else is just like it was in my version. They only had a one hour session about it, didn't even do the practical part and it won't be part of the finals... Doing the perl classes last year was a nice gesture but it took me more work to prepare that class than to prepare for the practical part of the finals all my classmates got instead. I don't mind if they use it in their future classes but credit where credit is due. What if I, in the near future, use those text/slides at another course and someone accuses me of stealing school course material? The first teacher I mailed to said she didn't use that much material and that mentioning on my resume I provided course material for the school was a bit exagurated. I think I will anyway since this is clearly not exagurated. I will discuss this issue after my graduation with the professors in question.
