Office of Academic Programs • 1000 East Victoria St. • Carson, CA 90747
UNIVERSITY CURRICULUM COMMITTEE
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
10:00am-12:00pm – President’s Conference Room (WH 444)
Minutes- Amended
Present: Cathy Jacobs, Mohammad Eyadat, Terry Richardson, Steve Williams, Cathy Earl, Tim
Chin, Mohsen Beheshti, Caroline Coward, Emily Magruder, Jamie Dote-Kwan, Betty Vu, Mark
Carrier, Kaye Bragg, Dorota Huizinga, Tracey Haney
Absent: Rod Hay
1. Call to Order: 10:05am
2. Approval of Agenda
3. Approval of May 14, 2014 Minutes: B. Vu moved to approve. M. Beheshti seconded.
M/S/P
a. Approved
4. Introduction of UCC members: C. Jacobs welcomed the committee members and gave
a description of the UCC and charge. UCC’s duties include to ensure the proposals are
sound before they go to the Provost and syllabi are in compliance with University
standards.
a. Point of Information regarding proxies- If committee members are unable to
attend a meeting, to please find another person to sit in as a proxy. The
committee agreed last semester that a current UCC member cannot hold a
proxy to avoid double voting.
Curriculum Proposals
1. UCC 14-15
001
MGT 310- Hybrid
MC
a. C. Jacobs- This course is currently available as face to face and online. The
current university definition for a hybrid course is up to 2/3 but not less than
1
1/3 online. An online course is more than 2/3 is online. She commented that
these descriptions should be redefined.
b. J. Dote-Kwan- A WASC policy or resolution was is being developed for online
instruction, that there is an equivalent of 3 hours of instructional time per
week for 3 unit class.
c. J. Dote-Kwan- Questioned if the case threaded discussions on Blackboard are
accessible.
d. S. Williams- The features in Blackboard are accessible, however not
necessarily everything posted on Blackboard is.
i. A pdf, PowerPoint presentation or video clip posted by the instructor
may not be accessible. Anything from the desktop of the professor is
their responsibility to ensure accessibility.
ii. Videos from YouTube should all be closed captioned, but that is not
guaranteed.
e. J. Dote-Kwan- Proposal Form, item 11b. Alternative Delivery Method is not
completed on any of the proposals. The department does not give the
percentage of online instruction.
f. C. Jacobs- UCC can ask the department about Power Points and PDFs being
accessible and videos being Closed Captioned.
g. J. Dote-Kwan- If UCC is going to be approving courses for the alternative
modalities, the courses need to be built more carefully from the start.
h. E. Magruder suggested courses be built to Quality Matters standards which
include accessibility. Generally this is an issue in all modalities.
i. C. Jacobs will develop a memo to send out to all college curriculum committees
so that they check for accessibility before proposals are sent to UCC.
j. Workshops have been offered to faculty in the Faculty Development Center
regarding how to make courses accessible in order to get new technology. These
workshops were not made available to lecturers.
k. E. Magruder- Video closed captioning service is provided by Information
Technology. Dylan Lewis is the contact person.
2
l. C. Jacobs- This has to be the responsibility of the departments and faculty
since it is not a syllabus requirement policy.
m. C. Jacobs- Asked T. Norman what percentage of the course is hybrid. The
information needs to be included in the proposal form (item 11b).
i. T. Norman- There are 11/30 online sessions; that would be the
percentage. He does not believe there is a specific reason why the
selected dates are chosen as online sessions.
n. J. Dote-Kwan – Case threaded discussions are the only instructional activity
for the online course. They can’t do a quantitative count on the seat time.
i. E. Magruder- The Quality Matters rubric does not provide specific
information on instructional time equivalencies for online modalities.
This information can be used to help standardize seat time for online
and hybrid courses.
ii. J. Dote-Kwan- A sample of the rubric would give a better idea.
o. K. Bragg- This is a good important discussion. She stated the committee may
be creating a standard that did not exist before with this course and is
concerned there’s an inequity.
p. S. Williams- There are tools in Blackboard that will log time. There are default
settings when students log in and how much time they spend to report back
who is participating. There’s no indication in the syllabus that those tools are
being used.
q. T. Chin- Questioned that the department states they do not need additional
resources for the course.
i. K. Bragg- Given the discussion, the department may need to include
resources regarding accessibility.
r. D. Huizinga- Suggested grandfathered thinking because all the discussion has
been about the online delivery of the course; this course has already been
approved for online offering. They should come up with policies in the future.
i. J. Dote-Kwan- Disagrees because standards change; there are new
policies and we need to evaluate this and to the current standards.
3
ii. C. Jacobs- The hope is that this type of information will trickle down to
others.
s. C. Coward- With these discussions, this is an opportunity to take a new look
with fresh eyes to review the courses, pedagogy, and to improve a course. They
make recommendations to improve courses because it is what’s best for the
students and university. The opportunity comes up when the courses come up
before the committee.
t. D. Huizinga- Accreditation bodies look at consistency.
i. C. Jacobs- They also look for continuous improvement and that is what
the committee is doing.
u. C. Jacobs- Called for a quick vote to evaluate courses regarding current
requirements for instructional time. Unanimous vote.
i. Taking this into account, the UCC will inform the college curriculum
committee chairs, Associate Deans, department chairs.
v. C. Coward- UCC can ask that this information be stated in an addendum to the
syllabus, rather than a clause, from this point forward since the information is
not a syllabus requirement.
w. J. Dote-Kwan- Moved to approve pending the addition of missing information
for online percentage (item 11b) and recommend that videos, and documents
posted to Blackboard are made accessible. M. Carrier seconded. M/S/P
1. Approved Pending
2. UCC 14-15
002
MGT 418- Hybrid
a. Typo- Last SLO “leader ship”
b. J. Dote-Kwan- Proposal Form, item 11b. Alternative Delivery Method; the
department does not list the percentage of online instruction.
c. C. Jacobs- The SLO’s are not as sophisticated for a 400-level class. She
recommended higher-level functions for this course level. Also, it is not clear
where they are covered in the assignments.
4
d. T. Norman- The learning outcomes are filled in the case assignments, however
the syllabus may not do enough to show this. It could take students the whole
term to accomplish this.
e. C. Jacobs- The 3 hours of instruction time is not evident in the syllabus. She
suggested UCC request additional documentation on how students get hours
with the assignments.
f. M. Carrier – It is unclear what counts as seat time. The Class Schedule weekly
assignments are ‘Read and Study’. This needs to be clarified.
g. C. Jacobs moved to send the proposal back to the department and ask that
they standardize and clarify the instructional activities from the homework
and justify the 3 hours of seat time for both hybrid and online course offering
proposals. J. Dote-Kwan seconded. M/S/P
h. Returned
3. MGT 418 Online
MC
a. Returned
4. UCC 14-15
003
MGT 490- Hybrid
MC
a. The proposal form is incomplete; none of the boxes are checked on the 2nd
page.
b. J. Dote-Kwan- The Thanksgiving holiday is included in the class schedule
which comes out to only 14 weeks of classes. The syllabus should reflect 15
weeks of course time.
c. M. Carrier - The work done outside of class is mixed with in-class work. It is
not clear how the work is divided as presented in the class schedule.
d. B. Vu moved to approve pending revised 15-week course schedule, differential
in-class and homework assignments in Class Schedule and complete proposal
form. M. Eyadat. M/S/P
i. Approved Pending
5. UCC 14-15
004
MGT 495- Online
MC
a. T. Haney- Recommended the department assign a new course number for the
proposal. 495 is designated for special topics courses. If approved, all MGT 495
5
Special Topics courses will be approved for online offering, not just the specific
topic being proposed.
b. J. Dote-Kwan- The course proposal has the same issues regarding instructional
time; it is not clear if the quizzes and threaded discussions are equivalent to 3
hours of seat time. The case studies do not give enough information to
determine if the instructional time is equivalent.
i. M. Carrier – The course does not give information if it includes essays or
other writing assignments. That would help clarify.
c. E. Magruder- The SLO’s may be strengthened for the course level. Consider
reviewing where ‘Discuss’ is on Bloom’s Taxonomy map.
d. M. Carrier- It is vague how the learning outcomes connect to the assignments
and how they will be completed.
e. E. Magruder- Asked if WASC has specific guidelines on how learning outcomes
need to be assessed or measured.
i. J. Dote-Kwan- No. WASC looks to make sure the university has and
measures learning outcomes and that we use the data for improvement.
f. A justification of course hours, online assignments, online hours, separation of
additional homework is needed.
g. M. Carrier – Asked if the all special topics could be approved.
i. T. Haney- Yes, but she would be hesitant to blanket the course.
Students can take several special topics courses and could inadvertently
get an online degree with more than 50% online courses.
h. K. Bragg- We need to ask the department if they want to propose all special
topics for online modality, or the particular topic. It is not clearly stated in the
proposal.
i. J. Dote-Kwan moved to return with the question of if the department wants
to blanket all special topic courses, or the particular topic for online offering
and suggestion for new course number. M. Carrier seconded. M/S/P
i. Returned
6
j. C. Jacobs recommended adding this topic to a future policy discussion for a
future meeting agenda.
i. T. Haney- There is a MGT 495 section offered as a hybrid in fall
semester. She will investigate this offering with the CBAPP scheduler
and report back to C. Jacobs.
6. UCC 14-15
005
OMG 420- Online
MC
a. C. Jacobs- There are several grammatical errors in the syllabus that need to be
corrected.
b. M. Carrier- The course description on the syllabus is missing “advanced” which
is in the university catalog description. This is an important difference
between descriptions. The catalog states the course, “provides advanced study
of…”
c. E. Magruder- The SLO’s are not advanced for the 400 level course. Suggested
they consider revising to higher-level outcomes.
d. The instructional time is not defined.
e. Recommendation to expand on threaded discussions and discussion board.
f. C. Jacobs- Elaborate on the Computer Information Literacy Statement and
give more specifics of expectations and software requirements, especially for
the online course.
g. K. Bragg- Course Outline/Schedule- It is not clear what the listed
“Recommended” websites are for or how they should be used.
h. C. Bordinaro moved to return requesting clarification of course hours, revised
computer information literacy statement, correction of grammatical errors. B.
Vu seconded. M/S/P
i. Returned
Announcements
i. Point of Information- A An impact statement was not received from the
CBAPP dean’s office. C. Jacobs and the Office of Academic Programs will
follow up with the dean’s office and request an impact statement for the
courses.
7
Adjourn: 12:04pm
8