Frequent Considerations
It has been observed in an international level that the faculty members have reasonable objections and concerns about actions related with Open Courses. Their main concerns are:
Students' presence in the amphitheaters
"My students will not visit the amphitheater since the lectures and the material is available on the Internet". This is a phrase that is frequently used by the faculty members.
The faculty members are advised to adapt to the new educational process, since the international experience has shown that the presence of students in the course will not be reduced, if at the beginning of the semester the faculty members explain to their students that having the educational material and the recorded lectures of a course available on the Internet, it allows them to better understand the lectureship and it also allows the faculty members to give greater emphasis on answering possible questions.
Time allocation
The faculty members usually develop their own notes, slides and supporting material which is used in their lectures and it is very often freely available on their personal website. The support group of will take over to reshape the material according to the standards set by GUNet, and faculty members will have an advisory role and will make the final inspection of the material and the course before it was published as an Open Course. With this practice, the faculty members will spend the least possible time. Also, a major benefit is that the continuous improvement of the course content, which is one of the basic obligations of the faculty members, is emerging as one of the benefits that stem from the development of the Open Courses.
Distribution of the educational material
It has been observed internationally that when an academic course and its material become open to the public, the value of the educational material increases, since it is addressed to a much larger audience.
Copyright
The issue of the intellectual property is a complicated process, but it is often related with the proper use of the educational material created by third parties. The OpenCoursewareConsortium claims that the number of the teachers who are willing to provide free educational material is usually larger than expected.
Undermining textbooks and publications
Most faculty members when they issue textbooks or publish their work, they usually consider the probability of having financial profit. The concern is that the existence of an Open class can have a negative effect on their quest to achieve publication or release.
There is evidence that Open Courses in fact promote the sale of the instructor's books and enhance the market for these publications as they increase the readability of the books of the instructors and demonstrates how to use the textbook in a class.
