DE

Minutes February 6, 2007

Attendees: Jan, Novak (chair), Kathleen Allen, Norman Buchwald, Dennis Chowenhill, Desmond Chun, Tom Clark,  Scott Hildreth, Michael Langdon, Andrew Pierson, Pam Shen, Lisa Ulibarri, Lani Wilson, Wanda Wong.

Jan distributed a copy of ?DE News?, highlighting some of the many activities underway in online teaching on campus that we?re not typically able to put on our meeting agenda. She committed to preparing these updates from time-to-time as a way to keep everyone informed and to make all committee members aware of additional opportunities to participate in DE initiatives.

Jan then began the meeting by highlighting the two issues facing the committee: Developing a process to adequately review this spring?s proposals and developing a longer-term approach to faculty support, proposal creation and proposal review.

Spring Proposal Reviews:

To assist committee members with the review of proposals, Norman Buchwald created the ?Checklist for Library, Research and Lab Resources for Distant Education.? The committee agreed the checklist provides individuals with important items to look for in online classes and discussed other ways to get this information to new instructors, such as a mini-module developed for all courses that would be available to all instructors. We agreed the checklist should be incorporated into the Formative Evaluation forms used by Lynn Sandoval to review online courses.

Jan distributed a document used by Las Positas College (LPC), ?Best Practices in Designing Online Courses.? Jan obtained approval from LPC to use the document at Chabot. This best practice guide and the library & research guide should be used by all committee members as a tool to guide new instructors and to evaluate proposals and courses. The guide is available on BOLT, and includes numerous links that aren?t available in the printed copy.

Jan sent a reminder to faculty that the deadline for submitting online proposals is 2/12/07. The committee discussed whether the language allows instructors to be aware of the separate approval process in certain divisions for those teaching new courses. We expect to receive 35+ proposals to review this semester. The committee decided to continue to review proposals in BOLT (for FAST-TRACK instructors only). Jan will review all of these proposals, and each committee member will review 1-3 of them so we can get feedback to these experienced instructors. For new instructors, we plan to designate one committee member as a contact point. This person will provide in-depth review of the proposal and feedback to the instructor, and will also participate in the course demonstration.

Jan brought to the attention of the committee that next Fall, she and another instructor are teaching an online-hybrid class. Jan is approved, but the incoming instructor is not. The instructor has previously taught at Chabot. The committee agreed that if Jan is the instructor of record, there does not need to be a separate approval.

Once all proposals are received, Jan agreed to provide the committee with a timeline for contacts and assigned reviewers for each proposal. At Wanda?s suggestion, Jan will also communicate this timeline and process to each proposer.

Longer-term approach to faculty support and proposal review:

Jan shared her idea of the ?Online Teaching Curriculum Concept? consisting of 3 courses. The goals are to support faculty as they develop online courses, improve faculty online teaching skills, and alleviate the burden on the DE Committee of proposal review so the committee can work on other important issues and initiatives.

The concept outlines the 3 requirements of teaching an online course:

Course One: Online pedagogy (1unit)
Who takes course and why?
How does online learning differ from classroom learning, and what are the implications of this for the online teacher?
Best practices in online teaching
Special issues in online teaching, and ways to address those issues

Course Two: Creating an online course proposal (0.5 units)
How to build an online course proposal and secure the required support of
colleagues and administrators. The outcome of this course would be a completed, approved proposal.

Course Three: Building the course (1.5 units)
Course design, tools, construction.
Taking the course live.
Continuous improvement.
The successful completion of this course would result in approval to teach the course the following semester.

Jan stated LPC has a similar course they will allow us to use, and we also have access to @One materials, so we don?t have to start from scratch. We agreed a self-paced course would be the most flexible, but it wouldn?t provide the full experience of online learning to these future online instructors. For that reason, we may want at least one of these courses to be ?live? instead of self-paced.

This approach would allow us to collect some WSCH for this training, would give instructors the skills and tools they need to develop quality online courses, and would alleviate the proposal review burden on the committee.

A general discussion from committee members ensued:

Tom stated there may be a need for a 4th course for instructors that have already taken courses 1-3 but now want to teach another course online (similar to our Fast Track approval process today). He also asked if deans could take the courses.

One question that was raised was what the rubric would be for this course. Tom suggested it be Interdisciplinary so that instructors from various disciplines could teach the courses.

Scott raised a number of questions. Who needs to go through the process, is it a parallel process? Are the courses self-paced, facilitated, when scheduled, etc?

This process may ultimately enable us to shift the content review back to the disciplines.

He also suggested we consider an advanced course (Podcasting, video, etc.) that would be open to everyone to learn new online teaching technologies.

Lani asked If individuals take @One courses elsewhere, do we waive this requirement and have staff development pay for course? Should we require committee members to go through courses? This new concept would allow for committee to focus more on evaluations vs. proposals. Allows us to review integrity and course delivery.

Norman asked if the concept applies to new courses being offered for the first time. Can we use this as a tool for experienced instructors to share their experience/expertise with new instructors.

Dennis asked about requirements for experienced instructors proposing to teach a new course. There appear to be several options, including delegating that approval to disciplines/subdivisions. We need to consider the diversity of disciplines across campus and different pedagogical approaches to teaching when developing courses 1 and 2. An example in course 2 might be a list of Language Arts do?s and don?ts. An example in course 1 could be a library of specific teaching methods for a discipline.

Wanda suggested following the current process to approve fast track instructors, and not folding that in to this new concept. She also proposed that these be 6 week courses, and that they each be offered 3 times per semester. Although that might lead to low enrollments in each course, Tom suggested that this approach could really accelerate development of our online curriculum, and perhaps we should be less concerned about enrollment.

One concern is that the Committee members all believe that reviewing proposals is a valuable learning process; we need to find a way to continue to share that learning.

Kathleen noted that these courses need to have modules on accessibility/disabilities. For example, if an instructor uses a video clip, they must include closed captioning for the hard of hearing.

The committee consensus is to support this new Online Teaching Curriculum concept. Significant work lies ahead, and that is part of our agenda for the rest of this semester.

Handouts:
Best Practices in Designing Online Course (LPC)
Checklist for Library
Online Teaching Curriculum Concept
DE Newsletter V1/1