I agree that this issue is related to the situation where instructors require their books to be used by their students, and the isntructors therefore get royalties on those book purchases.
My university considers such personal financial gain to be a conflict of interest and, therefore, unethical. Instructors are not precluded from using their own publications in their courses, but they are expected to place any personal financial gains into a schoarlship fund or other repository over which they have no direct control. The conflict-of-interest policy can be found at www3.niu.edu/provost2/facpers/appm/I10.htm and the relevant portion states "University employees shall not retain royalties or derive other financial benefit from textbooks, tapes, software, and other materials used in courses taught by them or by others reporting to or influenced by them, or in courses for which they were involved in selecting those materials. Such royalties or other financial benefits shall not serve the employee's personal benefit but should be made available for the benefit of the university." Jerrold H. Zar, Ph.D. Department of Biological Sciences Northern Illinois University DeKalb IL 60115-2854 ================================= Hmmm. What would be the difference if you had personally written the textbook and subsequently required students to purchase it for the class? Wouldn't you profit from that as well? OTOH, you are paid by the university and they may have rules and regs about certain outside "payments" in such matters. One question is would you use this software ahead of other materials because of personal gain? Why does the publisher need the anonymous grades? Wouldn't student feedback about the materials suffice? One solution might be to ask the students how they feel about these issues. If no one sees a conflict nor an invasion of privacy and there are no university proscriptions, it would seem to be permissible although on the margins. .=================== . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
