ASCRC Minutes 9/18/13
Poetry Corner, Mansfield Library, 2:10 p.m.
Members Present: J. Deboer, C. Henderson, L. Eagleheart, L. Gillison, T. Manuel, S. Samson, T.
Thibeau, M. Triana, N. Vonessen, G. Weix
Members Absent/ Excused: S. O’Hare, B. Holzworth, N. Hinman
Ex-Officio Present: J. Hickman J. Laine
Guest: L. Knapp
The minutes from 9/10/13 were approved.
Communication Items:

Professor Uchimoto was welcomed to the committee and members introduced themselves.
He will serve on the Science Subcommittee.

Another discussion topic for spring semester is whether UM should accept credits from
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Online education in general is an area that should
be explored. The President’s Taskforce on Academic Programming explored this topic as
well. The Taskforce was divided into groups that explored the external environment
(national trends) and conducted an internal scan in the areas of online education,
internationalism, and interdisciplinarity. The Taskforce has a final meeting next week to
finalize the report. It will likely be made available on the website. Camie will send it to
ASCRC for consideration as well. Professor Weix recently heard a talk given by Mary
Engstrom on the topic of MOOCs and suggested she be invited to a future meeting.
There are several undefinable areas with non-classical ways to get an education. One issue
with online courses is the variability of supervision and MOOCs do not have formal
assessment. There have been some cases of students working together to take exams in
online courses. However, the University accepts credit from other accredited universities for
traditional and online courses. Students are requesting to take online courses in place of
difficult courses required by their business majors.
The process for offering online courses is not entirely clear to many faculty. The President’s
Taskforce met with the Dean of the College of Extended and Lifelong Learning. The
College is an administrative unit. It provides the framework to offer online courses, but does
not make the decision of what courses to offer. These are made within the academic unit.
Structure. Camie will share the report given to the President’s Taskforce regarding current
online offerings.

Credit for experiential credit will require some thought as well. There may be students
returning to school after years of working in one career. A procedure will be needed to
determine how to give credit for this experience. This may involve a portfolio review.

ASCRC would also like to see data on dual listed courses (courses offered at high school that
count for both high school and college credit). These courses are taught by high school
teachers that meet the standards of Missoula College adjunct faculty. There are currently 226
students enrolled in dual credit courses. Chair Henderson will get the data regarding the
number of courses and topics offered. There are several math and writing courses. It will
also be helpful to review student performance in these courses.

Chair Henderson gave an update from the Faculty Senate meeting. The motion to change the
general education group of English Writing Skills to Writing was approved. The motion to
end the UDWPA and implement a University-wide Program-level Assessment was favorably
received for the most part. Chair Henderson explained that students’ grades in writing
courses are the standard to satisfy proficiency and are directly connected to the curriculum.
Students graduating from earlier catalogs where the UDWPA was a requirement would be
exempted because the exam is no longer offered. Unfortunately this rewards students for
procrastinating. It would be interesting to know how many students have met all degree
requirements except the UDWPA.

Loey Knapp, the Information Technology Strategist arrived at 3:30 to present information
about efforts to move the University closer to degree audit. In order to successfully
implement a degree audit system the data has to be accurate and useable. There should be
only one source of data and it should be in the same format. Therefore, the IT Office has
created a degree builder program for departments to use to create their degrees using various
rules and dropdowns in the system. This will create a uniform description of programs that
can be used as the source. The system also has flexibility and text fields to explain areas that
are unclear. This will take place of the program descriptions currently in the catalog. There
will be 5 departments involved in the beta test during the mid to third week in October. The
goal is for this to be ready for next fall’s catalog. Once this system is in place then the
University can think about degree audit.
A survey was conducted to determine how much time is spent on the advising process. It is
estimated that an electronic degree audit system would save 5073 hours or over $100,000 a
year. There are also financial risks to students and departments if advising is not done
accurately.
Business

ASCRC considered the revised policy drafts for 201.00 Curriculum Review Overview and
201.90 Special Topics / Experimental Courses. The questions regarding language in 201.00
were discussed by the committee. Professor Vonessen will revise the draft for consideration
next week. The Special Topics Procedure (201.90) was updated to reflect concerns regarding
permanent topic numbers in departments. The procedure was approved. The Credit Max
procedure (203.20) will be eliminated since in mostly repeats catalog language. Catalog
language should be removed from all procedures. Camie will review them and bring edits
for the committee to consider next week.
The AP/Clep procedure was on the review list because of problematic issues that may arise
with transfer students and common course numbering. Most universities including Montana
State University accept a score of 3 as recommended by the American Council of Education.
UM’s accepts a default score of 4, but departments may accept a lower score. The matrix
shows that there are only 4 departments that require a 4, the others accept a 3. It was agreed
that the policy should show a default score of 3, with departments ‘option to require higher
scores. A policy that requires all schools in the Montana University System to require the
same score should come from the Board of Regents.
The meeting was adjourned at 4.00 PM