Considerations for Sharing Curriculum Between and Among Campuses - Version 2.1
Boyum – July 23, 2008
Rev. August 1, 2008
Vision
1) Courses offered at CSU, A will be available for residence credit inclusion on graduate study
plans developed at CSU, B, where academic leaders at CSU, A agree to make the courses
available.
a) This should permit: CSU, A in agreement with CSU, B to offer specialized classes for
residence credit to students from both campuses, thus allowing classes that otherwise
might not “make” due to low enrollment.
2) Students at CSU, A will be able to routinely register for – with one click – and take for
residence credit an online offering of a course from CSU, B, C, … n.
a) This should permit: students to avoid delay in progress toward graduation due to a seat
being unavailable at a needed day and hour in a “bottleneck course” for the degree.
i) In a later iteration: this could be extended to Community Colleges D, E, … n for
courses that are fully articulated between and among 110 California Community
Colleges and 23 California State University campuses.
3) In what follows below, no consideration is given to intellectual property issues such as may
arise when curriculum for online delivery of familiar [likely, lower division] courses, developed by faculty at CSU, A is sought for re-use by program leaders and faculty at CSU, B.
a) This too is surely a “consideration for sharing curriculum,” but will be addressed
elsewhere.
Tasks
1) Identify policies that currently stand in the way of course sharing for residence credit.
a) WASC Policies
i) Online degree programs (more than 50% online) must go through WASC Substantive
Change review. These do not apply to the current Vision.
ii) As we have discussed it, there appear to be no other issues that WASC would raise.
b) Calendars
i) Note that, while this would promote cross-campus course-taking, if union interactions
and payroll considerations, and similar, prevent much progress in making calendars
more common, the rest of this project is not endangered.
ii) Campuses vary as to when a semester or a summer session begins. More
commonality – if not identical calendars - would promote easy sharing of curriculum.
iii) Quarter versus semester systems create obvious hurdles, as to calendar, and [see
below] credit awards.
(1) Might one begin with more commonality in calendar for semester campuses on
one hand, and for quarter campuses on the other?
c) Administrative Policies and Calendars
i) If campus calendars are brought more nearly into harmony, we must then think also
about registration, and adds / drops.
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d)
e)
f)
g)
(1) As to registration, campuses establish various priorities based on such things as
senior / junior / etc. status. As between a senior from a distant campus and a
sophomore at the local campus, which student should have priority registration in
an online offering?
(2) As to adds / drops, the same question arises for full classes. When a seat opens,
who gets priority?
Quarter versus Semester Credit
i) What is the accounting routine for moving credits between quarter and semester
campuses? Do we end up with odd units here or there? How can we find quick, or
elegant (preferably both) ways around this?
(1) It seems that making quarter-campus offerings meet the seat time of semestercampus offerings is the principal issue.
ii) What are the prospects of defining portions of curriculum in terms of learning goals
and required topics – and stipulating that the goals may be achieved via a course of,
say, not fewer than 3 semester credits, or 4 quarter credits?
Assessments; Credit by Examination (or by assessment)
i) This may be weakly associated with the Vision, at least in the sense that we want to
enable students to make quick and efficient progress to the degree.
ii) Do we want to take up this topic along with the many others? Or, let it go for now?
iii) Do accreditors – WASC or disciplinary – have rules about credit by exam?
iv) If portfolios are to be used, we should make use of ePortfolios
v) Two good candidates for assessments in these areas may be:
(1) American Institutions & Values (History; Political Science)
(2) General Education Area E, Lifelong Learning & Understanding
Title 5 issues: Residence Credit
i) For undergraduates: current Title 5 (Section 40403) requires 30 units “in residence at
the campus granting the degree,” and 24 units “shall be earned in upper division
courses,” and 12 “of the units shall be in the major.”
(1) Currently, “the appropriate campus authority may authorize the substitution of
credit earned at other campuses or institutions for residence credit.
(2) We ought to amend Title 5 to say, approximately, that units earned from sister
CSU campuses from courses offered online can be counted as residence credit.
ii) For graduate degrees, Title 5, Section 40510 mandates that no fewer than 21 semester
units be earned in residence [in programs comprising a minimum 30 semester units].
iii) Residence credit appears to mean that credit is earned by / at the campus of
matriculation.
(1) If our Vision means that CSU, X would automatically credit courses offered by
CSU,Y, we might interpret that as residence credit.
(2) In the alternative, we can amend Title 5.
Executive Orders – issues include how to credit work done at other campuses
i) New EO’s have continued previous policy that campuses who receive credit by
transfer are the deciders as to whether the credit applies to general education, to the
major, or to electives.
(1) In the Vision for this effort, the embrace of courses offered by one CSU for credit
at a different CSU is more intimate than transfer.
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(2) Implied may be [a] consortia of CSU’s that agree that the campus providing the
course can specify, and have honored, the GE category that a course fulfills /
meets; or [b] policy changes.
ii) To the extent that CSU departments / programs articulate their lower division
offerings for the major to LDTP course descriptors, easy “counting” toward a degree
major may be facilitated.
h) Faculty Work issues - some involving CFA
i) Will average class sizes increase?
(1) Consider that the classes with room for a distant student might otherwise be
offered with a smaller total number of students who are local matriculants.
ii) Faculty program advising – as opposed to giving good advice about how to study and
do well in the faculty member’s class.
iii) One might imagine that faculty would be asked to do little or no advising relative to
major program requirements for distant students, on the basis that faculty are not
expected to know the requirements of programs from campuses not their own.
i) Informal “policies” that result from faculty skepticism / refusal to approve online
versions.
i) At least some faculty are wary of online versions of speech classes. We know,
though, of examples where online speech courses have been offered that mandated
that the distant student deliver talks to live audiences.
ii) At least some faculty may be wary of online science labs.
(1) The implication may be that faculty experts would have to be identified, who
could persuade reluctant faculty colleagues as to the sound-ness of such offerings.
2) Identify any needed new policies that must be created in whole [rather than amended].
3) Draft, discuss, and win endorsement of amendments to existing policies, or of newly-created
policies, as needed.
a) Consider Academic Senate, CSU; ATAC; CFA; WASC interlocutors.
b) Faculty leadership will be crucial.
4) Identify operational patterns or routines that currently stand in the way of easy
registration for online courses offered by distant CSU campuses.
a) We will need good databases for this. Consider what ASSIST now does for us with
transfer from community colleges.
i) It is relatively easy to map descriptions of lower level courses. As discussed earlier,
LDTP may help us with this; and we may seek some policy change as to how to
automatically credit GE into the proper areas.
ii) Upper division courses are more challenging.
iii) There might be a layer of “automatic counting” toward a program [GE or major or
other], and a second layer where the work is handled in the same way that any
transfer credit is handled: human evaluation by disciplinary program authorities
[faculty; department chairs].
iv) Note, however, the nine units of upper division GE that CSU requires. We should
seek to include the capacity to complete that work also within this Vision.
b) “Federated” search strategies are implied. That is, armed with a degree audit from CSU
Long Beach, the LB student may search for a course to meet the requirement not only
that is listed in the LB registration database, but also for an online course offered by
SFSU that may have a different number and variant title.
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c) In the degree audit: click a button, “what other CSU courses are available? See Chico,
San Francisco, [whoever] and find more info.”
i) “Metadata” are implied so that the LB search engine will recognize the SFSU course
as meeting the requirement.
(1) CMS / Peoplesoft need to be in the conversation.
ii) Strong course descriptors with mandated elements are also implied.
(1) There is a business practice issue / requirement about how to describe courses. It
will involve campus curricular people [e.g., Associate VP’s for Academic
Programs] as well as faculty leaders [e.g., department chairs and deans].
d) Once a student finds an online course at another CSU campus, how can we streamline the
enrollment process?
i) Task: identify information that must be passed between campuses.
ii) Then: establish easy electronic means for passing the information.
e) How can we streamline the use of campus resources for students at a distance? Should
distant students have library access at the campus that is providing the instruction? Are
there other resources to be considered?
f) How can students at a distance get access to course content – consider textbooks. Should
the campus of instruction make textbooks available to students at a distance? Amazon
dot com?
5) What considerations are needed with respect to revenue sharing? Consider [a] marginal
cost allocation; and [b] student fees.
a) As to marginal cost allocation, is it sufficient to move ahead on the principle that the
FTES credit follows the instruction? The outcome would be that the campus providing
the instruction gets the FTES credit / the marginal cost allocation.
b) As to student fees, an opening principle appears to be that students pay State University
Fee, and campus-based mandatory fees, only once.
i) Course-based fees would be an apparent exception. Insofar as course-based fees
defray costs directly associated with instruction – for online courses, some kind of
online additional fee is imaginable – then the revenue from such a fee should be
provided to the campus that offers the instruction.
6) Draft, discuss, and win endorsement of proposed changes to current patterns or routines that
may stand in the way of this vision.
a) Consider campus registrars, and the need to avoid hand work in doing this: the need is
for automated systems to show registration, to populate transcripts.
7) Consider interactions with student financial aid: any courses taken from a distant CSU
campus must count toward full load requirements.
8) Consider how students and faculty will be made aware of this possibility. Will students need
training in doing this? What public relations efforts will be required.
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