Office of Instruction and Student Development Update September 5, 2014
Curriculum Updating
As many of you may remember, the ACCJC expressed serious concern in 2005-06 about the
number of out-of-date course outlines of record (COR) at CR. At the time, approximately 80% of
our CORs had not been updated within the past 5 years as required, and this led the ACCJC to issue
the recommendation to update out-of-date CORs and inactivate CORs we did not want as a part of
our COR inventory. The faculty and Curriculum Committee worked hard to update course
outlines, clean up the COR inventory, and develop mechanisms for ensuring that our COR
inventory stays current (such as the Curriculum Stoplight and the requirement that COR currency
be reviewed and reported as part of the program review process). The work involved to address
this recommendation was tremendous and demonstrated to the ACCJC that we satisfied their
recommendation.
We found, in the schedule development process, that many of our courses are being offered that
are out of date and in the “red” on the Curriculum Stoplight, and that puts CR at risk with the
ACCJC. We also found that the decision on whether to offer or not offer a course with an out of
date COR was not evenly applied across all academic divisions.
It is important that we not repeat our past mistake of not maintaining currency on our CORs and
that we continue to meet Accreditation Standard II. A. 3 (adopted June 2014) that calls for us to
have officially approved and current CORs that include student learning outcomes. To ensure
continuing compliance with the standards the administration, with support from the Academic
Senate Co-Presidents, will not schedule courses more than six years old (Curriculum Stoplight
“red” plus one year) commencing spring 2015 schedule.
Failure to keep our CORs current will negatively affect our students, will jeopardize our
accreditation status, and may affect faculty load. Please make sure you review the curriculum and
update your CORs before they become five years old.
Distance Education
We’ve made some significant progress on refashioning our distance education program into a
robust and quality online learning environment for our students and faculty. We’re piloting a
Learning Management System—Canvas, that shows significant promise in terms of ease of use
for the faculty and enhanced learning for our students. The Distance Education Substantive
Change Proposal is in the process of being reviewed by our constituent groups and will be
submitted to the ACCJC in October. Mark Renner and Mark Winter are developing training
sessions for faculty interested in teaching online or developing new online courses. The college is
committed to realizing the promise that distance education can provide us to increase access and
help students meet their academic goals.
I would like us to be ready to strategically increase our online presence once the DE Substantive
Change proposal is approved. To that end, I encourage faculty to continue to update revisions to
existing online course outlines and to begin developing new online course proposals that do not
put a program above the 50% threshold.
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It’s important that we position ourselves, when the substantive change proposal is approved, to
offer more online and hybrid classes in fall 2015 and spring 2016. To this end, I’ve asked Mark
Renner and Mark Winter to work with the faculty, Deans and Directors to identify opportunities to
expand our portfolio of online courses and degrees and to begin developing online courses and
programs in areas of potential strategic growth. Mark Renner and Mark Winter will work with
faculty to begin developing online course proposals that will push us beyond the 50% threshold.
However, to maintain good standing with the ACCJC, the Deans and Directors will not submit the
online course proposals to the Curriculum Committee until we get final approval from the ACCJC
on our DE Substantive Change Proposal.
Watch your email for regular newsletters from Mark Renner on topics germane to our Distance
Education program.
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