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/de/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/de/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:

• DDL established a Distance Education Online Faculty Seniority List - see http://profj.us/ddl/ddl.pdf

• Updated the online faculty email and phone numbers at lamission.edu/online

• Wrote a History of Online Education at Mission College - http://lamission.edu/de/online%2Dhistory/

• Developed the "Application to Teach Online" and the certification process for new online faculty - see click here

• Developed a form - "Are you reading to take an online class" for new prospective online students - see http://profj.us/ddl/forms/ready.htm

• Worked on an"Online Student Evaluation" form for students to fill in upon completion of their online class - http://profj.us/ddl/forms/studentsurvey.htm along with a Student Satisfaction Survey - http://profj.us/ddl/forms/satisfaction.htm

• Passed the following motions in the DDL Committee - http://lamc-ddl.pbwiki.com/Approved%20Motions

• Developed an "Initiative to Develop Online and Hybrid Classes" - http://idhop.pbwiki.com/

• 3 persons have been trained to deliver "Etudes NG" training at Mission - and delivered a number of etudes ng workshops - see http://missionetudes.pbwiki.com . Faculty using the etudes classic course management platform will transition all of their online classes to the newer etudes ng course management system by Summer of 2007.

• Assisted in handling the paperwork to get etudes clasic and etudes ng course management system paid for the 2006-2007 Academic year.

• Deveoped the information to place under "Online Classes" for the Fall 2006 - for students, faculty and staff at Mission - http://missiononline.pbwiki.com/

• Colabroated with the District Distance Education Committee -DDE http://lamission.edu/ddl/dde/ and see DDE minutes at http://laccd-dde.pbwiki.com/

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

• DE and Curriculum have collaborated in developing the process the add new online classes through curriculum and de policies and procedures.

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.