12pm-1pm, room 1506
Attendees:
Jan Novak, Andrew Pierson, Norman Buchwald, Michael Langdon, Des Chun, Hilal Ozdemir, Tom Clark, Lisa Ulibarri, Kathleen Allen, Judy O'Toole, Lani Wilson, Ramona Silver, Richard Dinwiddie, Bob Buell, Ahmad Asir.
Jan welcomed Ahmad Asir as the representative from the Student Senate.
New Online Student Support Programs for Spring:
Jan update the committee on the various student support programs we had prioritized for Spring implementation at our August 21st committee meeting. Those are:
Revised printed class schedule information about online courses, to include more detailed computer requirement information, a schedule of online orientation sessions, a link to a new webpage with information about each online course, and more. Telecourses and CD-ROM courses will have a separate information page. The DE course listing will be revised to group online courses, telecourses, and CD-ROM courses, and to note the number of required class meetings.
A series of online student orientations at the beginning of the semester.
A new online course webpage, with information submitted by each online instructor. A form will be sent to all Spring instructors in the next few weeks requesting information for this webpage.
A new 0.5 unit Intro to Online Learning course. The committee reviewed the course outline, and suggested several changes which will be incorporated into the final draft to be presented to the Curriculum Committee.
Expanded student Blackboard support hours. The committee supported the proposal, and discussed ways to inform students of this change.
The committee endorsed all of these new programs, and we will next determine how to "market" these improvements to both students and faculty.
Faculty Survey:
Jan distributed a draft of the survey to be administered to faculty at the October division meetings. Unfortunately, two pages were missing, so the survey will be emailed to the committee for feedback by the end of the week. Andrew suggested one change: to add a question following the "prediction" about the future of online learning to ask about what faculty hope will happen.
Student Access to Online Courses:
Lani suggested that there are access/equity issues for courses that are ONLY offered online, as this learning modality may not meet the needs/capabilities of all of our students. She is specifically concerned with "gateway" courses, such as PE-16: College Success for Athletes. The ensuing discussion raised questions of the feasibility of offering all courses both online and on-campus, methods to help all students have access to and succeed in online courses, and a clearer delineation of which courses are a significant issue for students. Lani will discuss the issue with her colleagues in Counseling to better define the courses of most concern.
Planning Meeting:
Jan tentatively scheduled a planning meeting for September 27th from 1-3 p.m. (This has since been changed to September 25th from 1-3 p.m. due to conflicts.) This meeting will discuss the Intro to Online Learning course in more detail, the Searchpath library skills tutorial, and the Bb 7.2 upgrade.
Online Course Proposals:
We've received 14 new online course proposals for Spring, and have 7 proposals received last year for courses to be offered in the Spring, for a total of 21 courses to be reviewed this semester.
Vista/IE7 and Blackboard Issue:
Ahmad raised the concern that the Blackboard system is not compatible with Vista and IE. There are several current workarounds to resolve this problem. Bb7.2 should resolve all of these problems.