Using previous student essays as examples

Question

I teach English as a second language to pre-college adults in the U.S., and I'm interested in the idea of using essays from previous students as examples in a writing class. At a previous institution we used a permission form that students signed giving the university the right to reproduce or modify written work, in part or whole, and with identifying information removed.

However, as an adjunct who will likely work at multiple schools, I would like to have that permission myself as well.

• What would be the legalities to consider doing such a thing?

• If I have students' written permission, should I still have permission from the institution to do this?

• Will a signed statement (in English), given by someone whose understanding of English is demonstrably weak, function the same as any other?

• Is there a precedent for instructors to gain this permission? As opposed to the institution as a whole.

• Would a blanket statement applying to all assignments work, or should it be for each individual assignment?

Edited to clarify: I'm interested in both positive and negative examples. Perhaps more so negative ones since the errors produced by international student populations would be more authentic and difficult for me, a native speaker, to reproduce.

I also have no intention of publishing them outside of classroom materials. Anonymous Mathematician made an excellent point that withdrawal of permission would be impossible if I did this. The only foreseeable publishing I can imagine would be as a course pack or teacher's guide given to the institution or other teachers, but I would still want to ask for additional permissions to do this.

Answer 1

Good question!

I ask students individually by e-mail if I can use their essays as examples for future classes. Almost always they are thrilled and happy. Then again, I only ask people who serve as positive examples. But I think if you explained to an ESL student that they have the bones of a good essay and that you would like to use it as a sample essay for future students to work on to help improve, I think they would be similarly pleased.

This would be more problematic if I wanted to use the examples in a textbook, used negative examples, or if I posted essays publicly on the internet. Then I might want a stronger version of a copyright waiver, such as what your previous school uses.

Answer 2

I'm not a lawyer and can't address the legalities, especially for students with a weak grasp of English. I'd imagine it would be best to write a clear, straightforward permission form that gives some explicit examples of what you have in mind in addition to an overall statement. I'd recommend the following principles as well:

1. Students should be assured that they don't need to agree to this and can withdraw their consent at any time in the future by getting in touch with you. (The main drawback I see to this is that you wouldn't be able to use their work in published teaching materials, since that wouldn't be compatible with withdrawing consent in the future. However, if you have in mind large-scale public distribution or anything that hints of profit, you should really make this explicit anyway.)

2. To avoid the appearance of coercion, it's best not to ask the students until after the course is over. That way, they won't worry that their decision could affect their grade.

3. I'd mention this in advance to your department chair in e-mail, not necessarily to ask permission but just to make sure he/she is aware of it. That way you'll find out quickly if the chair considers it a problem, and you'll have the e-mail as documentation if you run into any difficulties later. (Adjunct positions can be precarious enough that it's not worth taking unnecessary risks.)

4. If you request permission for a small number of carefully chosen essays, you can explain to the authors why each one would be a useful teaching tool. That would likely get a better response than just asking for blanket permission, although it would be more work and cut down on your flexibility.

Answer 3

A technical but not legal suggestion (as I'm not a lawyer). You can choose a license from Creative Commons and ask your students to release their work in such a license.

Given your needs, you could have something like a CC-BY-SA or CC-BY-NC-SA.

Pros:

• these licenses are internationally recognized
• there are many translations (so you can actually let the student understand the terms of the license)
• you would be given the right to modify the text, print it, share it.

You would have though to release your material with the same license (and I see as a feature, not a bug, but that is a personal opinion): often this is seen as a limitation if you want to publish something, but as long as you don't want to incorporate these excerpts outside classroom materials it's not your problem.