2022 Azbee Awards of Excellence
Category
Online > Podcast > Pacific
Awarded to
Jeffrey R. Young, Managing Editor and Podcast Producer
Entry details
Is It Still Teaching When the Professor Is Dead?
Issue or publication date: 2/9/2021
Publication name: EdSurge
Publishing/parent company: ISTE
Website home page: http://edsurge.com
About the publication's mission and readership:
https://www.edsurge.com/about
Description of the enterprising work that went into this entry and its significance or impact on readers:
The idea for this podcast episode started with a college student’s tweet that went viral. It read: “HI EXCUSE ME, I just found out that the prof for this online course, I’m taking *died in 2019* and he’s technically still giving classes since he’s literally the prof for this course. And I’m learning from lectures recorded before his passing….. it’s a great class, but WHAT”
Like many who saw it, we wondered what was going on here? And since we cover the business of online learning, we knew this story illustrated some big issues that have long gone unresolved as online teaching has grown, like who owns the rights to lecture videos and what are the ethics of continuing to use a professor’s videos once they’ve moved on, retired, or passed away?
The next step was convincing the tweeting student to talk to us. He was getting nervous about the attention—concerned that the scrutiny his tweet was bringing his institution might lead his professor (the living one officially charged with teaching the class) to give him a lower grade. And we wanted to get a statement from that living instructor, but he was reluctant, too, since he’s an adjunct professor, meaning he’s on contract without long-term job security. After off-the-record conversations with both sources to build trust, we convinced the student to do an extensive interview, and the instructor to send an audio comment. We also talked with an outside expert to put the situation in context for our listeners.
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Entry URL(s), if applicable:
https://soundcloud.com/edsurge/how-a-student-discovered-his-online-professor-died-two-years-ago
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Is It Still Teaching When the Professor Is Dead?
Category
Online > Podcast > Pacific
Description
Publication name:
EdSurge
Publishing/parent company:
ISTE
Winner Status
- National Bronze Award
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