DE Senate Distance Education Subcommittee
(Subcommittee of the SCC Academic Senate)
Meeting Minutes
March 10, 2015
12:00-1:30 p.m.
LRC 120
Co-Chairs: Kandace Knudson & Daniel Gilbert-Valencia
Attendees: Pat Hogarty, Angela Block, Elaine Ader, Pam Posz, Liz Stevenson, Normal Lorenz, Frank
Malaret, Marybeth Buechner, Gwyn Tracey, PJ
1.
2..
Welcome and review of minutes: no changes—accepted as is.
Announcements & updates from relevant committees
a. Curriculum (PJ)—SOCRATES changes: The changes streamlining the system will make it much
easier for the DE curriculum subcommittee. There is now a place for developers to determine the
maximum allowable percentage of a class that can be offered as DE. There is now a limited place to spell
out limitations or constraints, e.g. mandatory face-to-face final with ID check. There is now no place for
quantifying of REC required as was in the old system. These changes will roll through in the next 2 weeks.
Should the DE curriculum committee be policing whether or not courses should be taught only in a faceto-face format? The default is FTF, but what if there is a program that is intended to be DE completely?
There is concern that the new format is not providing a space to determine that courses will include REC
methods. PJ and KK will talk with Lonnie to see if there is a place where REC is defined in some way so
that an auditor can determine by looking at the course outline that it is a DE course and not a
correspondence course (for which there is no federal funding). The SLO assessment system is in
development: for DE, they use percentages in four categories. Are these categories adequate? DGV, KK
and PJ will sit down with Lonnie and talk about what is happening and what recommendations need to be
routed back up through SAG.
b. Ed IT Tech— budget ranking is in progress.
c. District Ed Tech—Pearson plug-in discussions have moved the process forward. DGV and KK
will be working with 2 SCC math faculty (Medina & Woodmansee) to test the integration of the Pearson
plug-in. ARC is doing FLEX trainings for faculty to see if their classes are ready for accreditation. First
workshop is about accessibility. DGV & KK have received info about those workshops from Marsha Reske
at ARC. It was mentioned that the ACCJC visiting team will have access to D2L courses. Marybeth, as the
ALO, will be present as much as she can during this process. Visiting teams use the ACCJC guide to
evaluating DE. The DO is launching a strategic planning process because the current plan is several years
old and outdated. Canvas adoption was discussed at Ed Tech, and it was mentioned that one of the OEI
participating colleges is currently using D2L and will be a good model for us to follow re: changing to
Canvas. Two years might be a feasible time frame for us to be able to use Canvas, but we don’t know—too
many details to be revealed. Sierra, Yuba, and Solano use it now. Kale Braden (DAS senate president)
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reported that the state senate passed a resolution to recommend that the money saved by the colleges by
using the Canvas statewide system should be spent on professional development by the colleges. At SCC,
we plan on having an extensive PR campaign to promote the system before the transition. We will set up
a sample class well beforehand so that faculty will have the opportunity to explore. Gwen mentioned that
we need to test Canvas with our blind faculty so that we make sure that Canvas adequately meets the
needs of blind students.
d. LMS coordinators—Pearson integration is foremost on our list of priorities, as it paves the way
for other publisher integrations. DGV and KK will be coordinating that testing integration. Audit team for
REC: no information has been provided by the district about their audit of REC, which is currently being
discussed with the LRCFT union.
e. Deans — training with DGV and KK. The first training is March 11 by DGV and will give deans a
toolset learn about D2L since they supervise faculty who teach DE and use D2L. The second session is
slated for April 22 and will cover DE regulation and additional D2L training.
5.
Updates from last meeting
a. OER update—Kale Braden is the California Community Colleges representative for the California
Open Educational Resources Council. KK has contacted him but has not received any specific info
about how the Council can help our current efforts. The Council will “facilitate review of textbooks for
inclusion the new California Open Source Digital Library” (icas-ca.org/coerc).
b. b. ADA update—A trainer from the Chancellor’s High Tech Center will visit May 8, and the
presentation will be recorded in the COVE. The counseling online appointment scheduling system is
up and running but needs to be tested by the DSPS office on campus. DSPS funding is available and
can be used for captioning. We need to spend it by June. DGV and KK will pursue that. Writing lab,
non-classroom but instructional videos are those that need to be captioned, e.g. writing center. Daniel
should be contacted for any videos that need captioning. We are still testing more effective means of
captioning.
c. c. Summer coverage plan—we will have the DE phone line (2635) be routed to go upstairs to the 2253
phone and will be triaging people—sending them to district help services for summer because we
have no staff during the summer (June July and most of August). There is a possibility to extend David
for the summer, and Frank will pursue that.
6.
Peer review/best practices momentum: —Liz volunteers to help and advocates for using
asynchronous communication. Discussion about the value of synchronous vs asynchronous model for the
group. CoP academy: Norman suggests SSSP funding could be used to discuss DE issues in this peerreview group. Norman will chat with KK & DGV to try to get this organized or off the ground. Angela
volunteered to participate.
7.
DE Strategic Plan: MB suggested that we work in the DE plan into the campus master plan. MB will
check with VPI to see what’s up with the master plan to see how we can connect the DE strategic plan.
We will make sure this is put on the website and we will email the link. MB will find out about the
campus master plan and get back to us. DVG and KK will handle the rest of this via email.
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Future agenda items:
7145 DO Policy
Accreditation
LTT—Jory’s return