2018-37

Arizona State University
University Senate

Senate Motion #2018-37

Motion Introduced by: University Senate, Student Faculty Policy Committee, Daniel McCarville chair.

Date of First Reading: February 26, 2018

Date of Second Reading:  March 26, 2018

Title of Motion: Amending ACD 304-10: Course Syllabus

Action Requested: The Senate Student Faculty Policy Committee and the University Academic Council recommend passage of this motion. 

Proposed Changes: The committee recommends four changes be made to ACD 304 – 10. Senators may also view these changes in the accompanying tracked changes document found in the top right hand portion of this page.  

Change #1

Add a new requirement in ACD 304-10 (#12) to read as follows:

policy on sexual discrimination as described in ACD-401 “Prohibition against Discrimination, Harassment, and Retaliation”, including the fact that the instructor is a mandated reporter and therefore obligated to report any information regarding alleged acts of sexual discrimination.

Rationale:  This has been a requirement from prior notices distributed by ASU senior leadership.

Change #2  Add a new requirement in ACD 304-10 (#13) to read as follows:

a warning to students that they must refrain from uploading to any course shell, discussion board, or website used by the course instructor or other course forum, material that is not the student’s original work, unless the students first comply with all applicable copyright laws; faculty members reserve the right to delete materials on grounds of suspected copyright infringement.

Rationale:  Faculty have reported that students have been abusing course discussion boards and forums by uploading copyrighted material without proper attribution or permission.

Change #3 In the third paragraph from the bottom, replace the existing language to read as follows:

The instructor may want to state that the course content, including lectures, are copyrighted materials. Students may not share outside the class, upload, sell, or distribute course content or notes taken during the conduct of the course (see ACD 304-06, “Commercial Note Taking Services” for more information).

Rationale: It has been reported that students have been uploading and selling course materials to commercial websites without proper attribution or permission. 

Change #4 After the third paragraph from the bottom of the current policy insert the following:

The instructor may want to place on each page (or online equivalent) of all instructional materials provided or made available to students the following statement:  “THIS CONTENT IS PROTECTED AND MAY NOT BE SHARED, UPLOADED, SOLD, OR DISTRIBUTED.”

Rationale: Many ASU exams, presentations, book chapters, and other materials are illegally sold by students to sites such as Course Hero.The change #4 statement is optional, but recommended, based on ASU negotiations with Course Hero. Course Hero has agreed to adopt an automatic copyright filter, which is designed to stop copyrighted content from being posted to CourseHero.com. If the change #4 statement is included in instructor’s course related materials, the Course Hero filter will prevent the material from being uploaded to their site.