To:
From:
Date:
RE:
DE Planning Committee
Mark Renner – Director, Distance Education
Jan. 29, 2015
Spring 2015 Task – to create DE Plan
To write even a cursory summary of the planning and development of DE at CR in the past 10 years
would be an arduous and wearying task for both author and reader. However, many people in this
past decade have made various efforts – and with varying degrees of success – in the goal of putting
our district onto a sustainable, conscientious course of action for eLearning.
So I share two salient (yet obsolete) documents at this time:

Distance Education Team: Summary of Activities (Fall 2008 - Jason Leppaluoto)
In this important yet now-obsolete document, the author summarized a substantial effort (in
which Mark Winter and I participated, among others). This includes a history, projects
undertaken, barriers identified, and a self-assessment. It also contains Mr. Leppaluoto’s
recommended next steps for each identified barrier.

DE Strategic Plan (Dec 08, Andy Howard [consultant from Rio Hondo])
This plan, commissioned by then-President Marsee and written by Mr. Howard with input
from Mr. Leppaluoto, suggested a path for College of the Redwoods to increase its online
courses over the next two years.
Clearly, it is a critically important task for CR to build a current Action Plan. Brainstorming with
VPISD Snow-Flamer, we should start “from scratch”, leveraging our now-modern eLearning
platforms/infrastructure and momentum to create a vision and plan for the next fiscal year.
We (VPISD Snow-Flamer and I) think that the following elements, ideas and challenges (to name
but a few) must be included in this plan. The ideas below are presented in no particular order, and
each item has numerous nuances to be included into a DE Plan:
 We must address declining FTF enrollments and increasing student demand for online
courses, coupled with increasing competition from OEI and other CCC’s with strong online
offerings;
 We need to systematize the DE Director’s creation of an annual, up-to-date DE Substantive
Change Proposal and its submission to ACCJC;
 We should cover, in substantial specificity, the technology infrastructure purchases and
deployments (both hardware and software [e.g. webcams in numerous places; WebEx &
TelePresence; etc.]) which we can use to improve student success in DE courses, and faculty
success at preparing and delivering an increased number of such courses.
 We should “mine” Mr. Leppaluoto’s & Mr. Howard’s docs for any potential ideas, etc.; we
should do the same for/with any other robust DE action plans we can find
Timeline: Plan to be finished & on President Smith’s desk by no later than April 1; earlier is better
Goal for today’s meeting: Brainstorming