DE Senate SUBDistance Education Committee
(Subcommittee of the SCC Academic Senate)
Minutes from September 16, 2014
10:00-11:30 p.m.
LRC 119
Co-Chairs: Kandace Knudson & Daniel Gilbert-Valencia
Attendees:, Pat Hogarty, Deborah Saks, Jesus Malaret, Nicole Woolley, Dyan Pease, Norman
Lorenz, Jennifer Schwedler, Pam Posz, Joshua Roberts
Meeting called to order at 10:05 a.m.
1.
Review of minutes from last meeting.
The minutes were distributed and reviewed. No corrections were noted. Nicole Woolley
asked if ARC contact with students was the same contact SCC had with students. Yes the
campuses have the same contact with students.
ARC has a new document-new regular effective link. Sent out for last meeting. We should cross
reference ARC with our rubric. We will not be able to complete this before summer but it
should be done soon!
Minutes approved.
2.
Announcements
a. Daniel Gilbert-Valencia will be attending the Academic Senate meeting (9-16-14) to
discuss the Course Design Standards (CDS). Norman Lorenz wanted the committee to know
there was some concern among the senate that the Standards would be used to review
faculty. That is not the intention of the CDS and Distance Education committee members
should try to attend the meeting to support Daniel at the Senate meeting. The CDS should
be used at a tool for student success, how to build online curriculum.
b. Kandace Knudson is building a visual aid to explain layers of DE, accreditation, Union,
Senate and will provide it to the committee for feedback when it is drafted.
c. Daniel Gilbert-Valencia- D2L Updates
D2L downtimes:
Jan 5th
May 25 & 29
Drop in lab hours in LRC – 114
2
10a.m.-11a.m. daily, 2p.m. - 4 p.m. daily
Or by appointment x2635
3.
Discuss Los Rios District DE Policy draft (attached)
The policy is a draft put together by the District.
Kandace and Daniel encouraged all committee members to provide specific feedback on the
policy (via email to KK and DGV) by Thursday Sept 18. Kandace and Daniel will be
compiling and sending to the DO Friday.
Josh and Pat and Dyan all said that they conduct fully online orientations, which is relevant
to the district’s policy about the definition of a fully online course. Kandace encouraged
everyone to send comments about how members conduct orientations, whether they are
they face to face, online, or mediated some other way, including any numbers they have of
students attending orientations. This is good information to have when representing the
campus at the district meetings.
The committee discussed the definitions proposed in the district policy and asserted that:
* The term web mediated courses (1.1.3) is very confusing.
* Students don’t know what hybrid means and may believe that taking an online class
means that there will be no face-to-face meetings at all.
* Students need to know upfront before registering for class what is on line and what is face
to face.
* Students don’t look in the schedule to read the notes before registering. Students are
looking for open classes not reading class descriptions.
The committee recommended that we add a pop up box to explain class requirements before
allowing people to register for an online class.
* Students drop out because they don’t know what they are getting into. Frank Malaret
mentioned that Western University requires students to take a course before they enroll
for an online class.
* Technology can be a barrier for some of our students, on line classes are more work and
students don’t realize how different the on line classes can be
* Students can’t rely on a phone being sole means to for class access.
* Counselors understand on line is not easier and would like a flyer to give students to
understand what on line means. Daniel has made up an information handout for
counselors. He tries to visit them every semester to hand out flyer.
3
Section 1.2 “Authorized Platform”
Daniel Gilbert-Valencia discussed the definition and feedback –D2L, Moodle. District wants
all campus to use the same system. There are FERPA issues, which the course standards
will be helpful in setting up a checklist.
4.
Distance Education priorities for this school year
Kandace Knudson-read list from (Jory) last academic year.
* We need to seek a college-wide definition of hybrid, DE, Online and a shared and clear
definition of what % of seat time exists in hybrid courses.
DE committee needs to seek recommendations to update:
* SCC Regular Effective Contact Guidelines
* Academic Senate Departmental Guidelines for DE courses (the section about instructor
training/preparation for online teaching)
* Consider campus-wide guidelines for authentication standards to inform board policy
* Recommend to Academic Senate and deans ‘boilerplate’ schedule notes according to
modality. Continue analysis of course success rates by modality per ACCJC request and in
line with good practices
The committee recommended that the Course Design Standards should somehow be
incorporated into the SOCRATES curriculum system. Kandace agreed to speak with Patti
Harris-Jenkins this issue and invite her to speak to the DE committee about it.
5.
New items
Norman Lorenz will talk with Marybeth Buechner about the alignment between distance
education and the student equity efforts. He will report back at the next meeting.
Next meeting Oct 21 10-11:30 LRC-119