Christine Hurt has an interesting post at The Glom, asking about the norms surrounding the use of other professors’ syllabi and exams. It does seem hard to believe that the lifting of a syllabus from another professor (especially in the law world where there are limited numbers of casebooks that people adopt — and a small number of ways to read them) could be deemed plagiarism. This is especially so if each individual professor tailors the “boiler-plate” accordingly.
But the exam question is a harder one. On the one hand, writing good exams is one of our hardest jobs — and one of the easiest ones to mess up. Since we owe our students well-designed exams, it seems hard to argue that every new professor must start from scratch and learn the hard way just how tough it is. Indeed, because the exam is so central to the student’s education, it seems foolish to force new professors to write all their own exams from scratch (and threaten them with the word “plagiarism” if they don’t). On the other hand, precisely because it is such hard work, one can certainly see the arguments on the other side. Scholarship is hard work too — and we don’t want people copying others’ work just because new scholars don’t always know what they are doing! Putting formal copyright infringment issues to one side (since I suppose there is that), what do people think? Would you care if others were “borrowing” your exams, even without attribution? Would you care if your colleagues were “borrowing” exam questions from others. I know I wouldn’t care about either of these things. I suppose if I learned a colleague was never writing his/her own exams after several years in teaching but just using some other exam from another school from another year, I’d be somewhat concerned. But it would take an extreme case to get me going. In fact, I would encourage new people to use some old questions that have already been tried by people doing it longer, for the students’ sakes.
I’m curious if others have different feelings about this. Of course, many casebook authors support adopters with questions and answers. But leave that somewhat different scenario out of it.
Posted by Ethan Leib on August 12, 2008 at 05:09 PM
Comments
I may be way out of touch but I have always thought that sharing exam questions and syllabi (I hope that is the plural of syllabus) is routine. When a school has multiple sections of a course like Civ. Pro. or Torts or Contracts, sharing syllabi helps the teachers make sure that the coverage in the several sections is similar. The professors at my school who teach Civ. Pro. have shared, without prompting, their sylllabi and exam questions since I returned to the classroom. I believe most of us send colleagues, both new and old, who will be teaching a course for the first time our recommendations for casebooks as well as a syllabus for that course. In Civ. Pro. I am always looking for new personal jurisdiction or Erie Doctrine questions or for a new way to set up questions to cover pleading and discovery. I like to see what my colleagues have done to make sure my questions are not too easy or too difficult. When I taught Remedies for the first time in about 20 years one of my colleagues gave me a book recommendation, her syllabus for that book and also her typed notes on the cases and materials she covered. If I used a colleague’s work verbatim, perhaps attribution is appropriate, but I would not add that as a line on my syllabus or on the final exam. I think a ‘thank you’ to him or her in the hall should be enough, or take your colleague to lunch. Moreover, I have not used another professor’s syllabus or exam questions verbatim. What works for him or her may not work for me. Using another person’s ideas is not copyright infringement. Dave Shipley
Posted by: Dave Shipley | Aug 12, 2008 8:05:22 PM
Isn’t this why various groups (the AALS Civ Pro Section and the Civ Pro listserv, for example) set up exam and syllabus banks–to promote the sharing and use of this information by new professors. The assumption for teaching is that copying (with adjustments and modifications) of what has been done before is the proper approach to teaching (although this perhaps will change as the conventional wisdom continues to move to the belief that the historic approach to legal pedagogy is entirely wrong). By contrast, the premium in scholarship is creativity–saying and doing something new and original. That said, I believe there must be some “ownership” of the materials–what was done before is a starting point that each professor must make her own. I would be concerned with a faculty member who simply slapped a new name on old materials–it would strike me as indicating a lack of interest in teaching.
Posted by: Howard Wasserman | Aug 12, 2008 7:00:39 PM
At my school, last year’s property exam for my prof was an (unattributed) copy of a 2005 exam I found on google. I would have been very pleased if the exam I had to take was also one I had found (and therefore took) prior to my actual exam.
I encourage all my profs to recycle questions I’ve already read an answered. I enjoy the easy points.
Posted by: dizzle | Aug 12, 2008 5:41:06 PM
I had a prof who said she was using another prof’s syllabus. No one thought it a big deal. It’s only plagiarism if you don’t credit your sources…
Posted by: niles | Aug 12, 2008 5:27:05 PM