Attendees: Jan Novak (chair), Nick Alexander, Norman Buchwald, Bob Buell, Tom Clark, Mary Dermody, Richard Dinwiddie, Scott Hildreth, Michael Langdon, Judy O'Toole, Andrew Pierson, Lisa Ulibarri, Lani Wilson, Minta Winsor, Wanda Wong.
The committee welcomed Nick Alexander as a new member.
February FLEX Day DE Workshops:
The committee reviewed a detailed outline of the agenda for our "New Tools for Online Teaching" workshop. Some minor changes were suggested, but overall the agenda met with the approval of the committee. Scott volunteered to bring some food for the session.
Priorities for the Semester:
We discussed our priorities for this semester:
A survey of online students. This will begin on February 11th, using SurveyMonkey.
Development of an online learning brochure for distribution by counselors.
Preparation for our upcoming Blackboard upgrade--preparing faculty for the transition, and working with students to smooth the transition.
Investigation of new online teaching technology, including Respondus and it's Lock-down Browser to strengthen academic integrity, Campus Pack for collaboration tools, SafeAssign/Turnitin for plagiarism detection/prevention, podcasting, etc.
Further development of an informational website for current or prospective online students.
Strongly encouraging faculty to consider the development of hybrid online courses, which could ease the parking and classroom stress for both students and faculty during the campus construction over the next few years.
Beginning the development of a strategic plan for online learning at Chabot.
Completing the "must do's", which include program review, the DE unit plan, a budget proposal, and new online course proposal reviews.
There was a lengthy discussion about how and when we might encourage faculty to develop hybrid online courses, or even just to add Blackboard elements to on-campus courses. One difficulty is that Fall 08 schedules are completed, and Spring 09 schedules have been at least tentatively established, so it's unlikely we'd have an impact on the schedule for at least a year. We finally agreed that we would mention hybrid options or simple tools to add to campus classes at our Blackboard upgrade workshop next week, and continue to encourage our colleagues to consider these options, but we would not make this a major priority for the semester. We may also develop an Online Learning News that focuses on hybrid options.
Two suggestions for future discussion:
Nick Alexander suggested that we conduct a survey or work with Institutional Research to determine if the addition of Blackboard elements into a class enhances student retention or success. This may apply to both "web-enhanced" campus courses as well as hybrid online courses.
Lani Wilson suggested we ask faculty to try out just one Blackboard tool for their on-campus classes, and provide support to make this easy for them to implement.
Database of approved DE instructors:
Jan circulated a copy of a new database of ALL DE approvals of which we're aware. This will be kept up to date, and is available on the DE website.
This Week's Division Meetings:
The committee brainstormed ideas for reports at division meetings about the activities of the DE Committee. Ideas included encouragement to attend our FLEX sessions, mentioning the online student survey, and suggesting hybrid online courses as an option to help us alleviate parking and classroom pressures while potentially enhancing student learning.
Next Meeting:
We'll meet next on
February 19th. Our agenda will include a course demonstration, a report on
the number of proposals we've received, and a review
of preliminary results of our student survey.