Report on Distance Education Committee at Mission - FrontPage
1. Distance Education Committee - Under Article 40 of the AFT Contract 2005-2008 effective 7/01/05, each college is to have a "Distance Education Committee. Mission College organized its DE Committee in October of 2005, and had its first meeting on 10/14/05 - See agenda and minutes from 10-14-05 to 3-14-06 and agenda and minutes from 4-07-06 to present.
Our DE Committee meets every 2nd Friday, through "Meet and Confer". Our Committee includes faculty, administration, Information Technology, Student Services, and Counseling.
2. Accreditation Questions for Distance Education - The DE committee has attempted to answer a number of questions for our Accreditation Self-Study regarding Distance Education.
They include the following:
1. What is the role of the Distance Learning Committee in helping our students succeed?
2. Has the college increased its efforts to provide access to information technology and to assist students in developing their technological competence with considerable success?
3. Have any new computer labs been added?
4. How many online courses have been offered?
In, 2003 - 19 online courses
In, 2004 - 51 online courses
In, 2005 - 72 online courses
In, 2006 - 30 Spring 2006 (etudes) - 27 Fall 2006 (etudes) - 6 Winter 2006(etudes), 13 Summer 2006(etudes) = 76 online classes
In 2007 - 10 - Winter 2007(etudes) - 34 - Spring 2007(etudes, coursecompass, etudes ng)
5. Summary of DE progress since the last accreditation.
Answer : 1. Article 40 of the AFT Labor Contract 2005 - 2008 - see http://lamission.edu/ddl/article40.htm
provided for the creation of a Distributive and Distance Learning Committee which is to report its work, activities, plans to an Education Planning Committee (EPC) - which has not been created at Mission.
a. The DDL Committee was organized in the Fall Semester of 2005 - see charter at http://lamission.edu/ddl/charter.htm and the Committee constituted with its membership.
Its statement of purpose is as follows: A D/DL Committee or its equivalent will serve the function of communicating and advising the college in its decision-making regarding D/DL issues.It should report to the college’s Educational Planning Committee or its equivalent and should include D/DL faculty, information technology staff and administrators involved in D/DL course development and delivery. The college Curriculum Committee and the D/DL Committee or equivalent should address D/DL efficacy as it relates to the total instructional program. The D/DL Committee is under the purview of the Academic Senate. The Committee voted to change its name from DDL to DE - Distance Education Committee as it better communicated its purpose to the college as a whole. Distributive Learning is not very well understood by a majority of faculty and staff.
3. The Committee started to meet, and the agenda and minutes are located at:
http://hyper.vcsun.org/HyperNews/djordan/get/ddlagenda.html?inline=-1 also at http://lamc-ddl.pbwiki.com/Minutes . The DE Committee has been meeting two times a months since 10-05, and the following progress has been made:
- Updated the online faculty email and phone numbers at lamission.edu/online
- Developed the "Application to Teach Online" and the certification process for new online faculty - see click here
- 3 persons have been trained to deliver "Etudes NG" training at Mission
http://abogado.pbwiki.com/etudes-ng and training for etudes ng will be provided to faculty during July-August 2006, and the Fall 2006 semester. Faculty will transition all of their online classes to the newer etudes ng course management system by Fall 207.
- Assisted in handling the paperwork to get etudes clasic and etudes ng course management system paid for the 2006-2007 Academic year.
The DDE and DDL have similar purpose to promote and support Distance Education.
- Discussed developing an online orientation for online students similar to Foothill
http://www.foothillglobalaccess.org/main/how_to_begin.htm
here is the current link for "description of Self-Study - Standard 2 -
http://www.lamission.edu/accreditation/docs/standard2.pdf
Each semester, approximately 20 sections of online classes are offered. These sections serve 800-900 students. College faculty current use one of 4 systems to offer online classes: individual ISP’s, Blackboard (not supported by the college), WebCT and ETUDES. The college maintains licenses for WebCT and ETUDES.
Courses that utilize alternate delivery systems go through the same process as courses offered through traditional means.
Distance Education
The college’s distance education program is growing. This growth is fueled by both student demand and the declining number of classrooms as the college goes through the Prop. A/AA construction projects. Each year, the college adds 2-3 new classes and these distance education classes go through the same process as any other class new to the campus. These are the steps
The online schedule is developed in the same way as the schedule of courses offered on campus. Faculty for these classes are selected in the same way and use the same course utline and same textbooks that are used in the college’s face to face classes.
Issues and Concerns regarding students:
1. Student success: Student success is a common discussion topic with the distance education faculty. There is a general perception that students do not understand the commitment required to be successful in online classes. Evidence tends to bear this out: the attrition rates in online classes are much higher than face to face classes, but the success rates tend to be higher as well.
2. Student satisfaction: Each semester, the online instructors encourage their students to participate in the satisfaction survey provided by the state chancellor’s office. The results of the most recent survey are here
3. Students who start late: Some students will wait until well into the semester before beginning the course. The success rate for these students is limited.
4. Add Process: The process to add students after the semester begins is still very reliant on in person processing. This is a disadvantage for students who are not geographically near the campus.
5. Other Resources: Although it has yet to be an issue due to the limited number of courses, online counseling is a goal for the program.
Issues and Concerning regarding the faculty and program
1. New online faculty: As the number of faculty interested in distance education increase, there needs to be a more visible (accessible) support system for faculty who are developing and teaching classes.
2. Section 508 compliance: Classes need to be reviewed for compliance and a mechanism setup to ensure future compliance.
3. Long term stability of Course Management Systems: Contracts with the current CMS providers are annual and there is no guarantee that the provider will offer an affordable system for the next year, resulting in a great deal of uncertainty for the faculty.
Action Plan:
1. Investigate the possibility of an orientation to online classes as a prerequisite for online students.
2. Continue to encourage students to complete the chancellor’s student survey and disseminate these results.
3. Implement and enforce an “exclusion for non-attendance” policy.
4. Work with the College admissions office to develop an add process for distance education students.
5. Work with West Los Angeles College under a cooperative Title V grant to develop distance education counseling services.
6. Develop a web site for new and continuing distance education faculty providing resources.
7. Start user group(s)
8. Online courses were evaluated for section 508 compliance as part of the SPS technical assistance visit in June 2005. The curriculum committee will investigate a process for ensuring that future classes are compliant.
9. Work with the LACCD to acquire long term agreements with one or more CMS providers.
click here for distance education dialogue
Distance Education Dialogue
Questions to Aid Development of the Self Study
An institution offering courses through electronic or other modes of distance delivery is
expected to meet ACCJC standards and policies. The questions below are provided to
assist institutions in undertaking discussions as part of self study development. Evaluation
teams will similarly use them in validating the Self Study.
Curriculum and Instruction
What means does the institution have to ensure that courses intended for electronic
or other modes of distance delivery are developed through a process similar to traditionally-
delivered courses?
BR-Distance Ed. Courses are developed in the same way and go through the same process as any other course. We can provide the District/College policy and procedure for course adoption.
JC-ANSWER: You answered this one for us! But it’s true; the Curriculum Committee did make us go through SEVERAL hoops to insure our courses were similar to the live courses.
HS 2/16-- While frustrating at time, I think LAHC Curriculum Committee does an excellent job of ensuring that the academic rigor of online courses matches (as close as possible) that of traditionally delivered courses. I don’t see a need to make any changes in this area.
TW 3/3-- TW F2f and online course objectives and content compared in the review process
How does the institution ensure that courses and programs provide for timely and
effective interaction between students and faculty?
How does the institution ensure that courses and programs provide for effective
interaction among students?
BR-This is a good question—I don’t know that we have systematically included distance ed. courses as part of the instructor’s periodic evaluation. I will definitely recommend it when we start evaluations this cycle. What do y’all think?
JC-ANSWER: I always have my students evaluate specific features of each online class; it’s their final discussion question, and I have some sample student feedback somewhere or other. But this doesn’t really answer the question fully. The institution doesn’t (as far as I can tell) ensure “timely and effective interaction” between students and faculty. I know that a WHOLE BUNCH of my students’ grades depends on their interaction on the message board (at least one posting and five responses a week, and they must be substantive items, and I interact on the board); I send out special announcements and group comments to e-mail lists; students fire dozens of e-mails off to me a day. But it’s not something either systematized or tracked by the institution. If it’s to become part of the evaluation process, then just having the peer group members who evaluate the instructor log on and look over the message board interaction would work well and be incredibly easy.
Ann W—11/4—Like John, I require the same sort of interaction. But, as with any class, live or online, you can’t ensure timely responses by faculty (or students, for that matter). That’s one of the questions on the evaluation form for live classes. There should probably be a way to create an evaluation form for online students that’s equivalent. Maybe the IT people know enough about CGI to help us with that?
BR 11/5—We’d probably need the AFT’s agreement to convert the paper one to an electronic format. What about just sending it as an attachment and ask them to return it to the chair of the evaluation committee?
JC 2/9--Here's a last minute tag on to the responses about instructor evaluation
forms, AFT sign off, contract stuff.
Currently, student evaluations for the live classes go to the division chair
and are opened with the evaluation committee in the chair's presence. They
do not go to administration (well, maybe they do if there's some problem,
but I'm not aware that they do even in those cases). An online evaluation
form would have to go to the division chair, not to a distance ed.
coordinator or other administrator to mimic what we currently have in place.
Now how will that be accomplished?
LL 2/10 The institution gives instructors access to an online classroom system. The system provides email for student to instructor and student to student contact. It also provides a message board for discussions between students and instructors. Students and faculty are alerted that new messages are available since the last login by special icons upon login.
HS 2/16-- My experience is that there is timelier & effective interaction between student and instructor (and among students) based on the nature of the online deliver system (email, discussion boards, etc.). I personally communicate more with online students both daily and weekly in online courses than I do with students in the classroom setting.
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