ABSTRACT
All over the globe, there’s hardly a soul who resists the seductive pull of the Internet for shopping, entertainment, knowledge, and communication. While nearly everyone everywhere has been swept up by the web, a grumpy army of faculty has resisted. Teaching online may not be a wise career move. For many, it may even be a suspicious departure from a safe academic path, turning away from far more acceptable on-campus classroom teaching, raising questions about a professor’s commitment to scholarship. While at some schools, faculty participate actively in reaching decisions about the future of digital education, some colleges and universities introduce online programs with little or no faculty engagement, fomenting dysfunctional resentment and frustration. Conventionally, faculty maintain largely unrestricted rights to on-campus lectures and other pedagogical materials. In the digital environment, however, institutions also claim rights in return for investment in online technical infrastructure, multimedia presentations, and instructional design staff, among other resources.
