District Distance Education Committee Minutes

May 25, 2006

Members Present: Pamela Atkinson (City), John Clerx (District), Linda Delzeit (Trade), Eric Ichon (West), Richard Skidmore (DAS/Pierce)

Guests: Chris DeYoung (District), Joe Perret (Southwest)

Moodle

Chris DeYoung explained that the District has entered into a contract with Remote-Learner.net to host Moodle for up to 5,000 users using a dedicated server for one year. Any college and/or ITV are welcome to use this resource and those who are interested should email Chris at DeYoungCR@email.laccd.edu with your name, email address and phone number. The current contract for $6,000 was paid for out of District IT funds. Chris plans to use 700 accounts for District training, Joe Perret informed us that LASC plans to use approximately 210 accounts and Linda Delzeit plans to use it for 5 classes at LATT this summer and additional classes in the fall. Although Remote-Learner provides options for either faculty or student technical support neither is included in the current contract.

UIA

Richard Skidmore brought up the UIA (Universal Internet Access) email system that is available District-wide. Several of us described our negative experiences regarding this system. LATT has never been able to stabilize the system and at WLAC new student email accounts have to be requested for each course each semester. Pamela Atkinson mentioned that the system is used as a login authorization tool for computer labs at LACC.

Videoconferencing

Richard suggested that we consider the use of videoconferencing for future meetings. At the next meeting we will poll participants to confirm which campuses have this capacity.

CMS

Richard suggested that the District develop a proprietary CMS to be used throughout the District and market it to other institutions. Joe; who has taught 35 online classes using Blackboard, eCollege, FrontPage, Moodle and WebCT; and the other committee members disagreed, as we feel that outsourcing hosting is less expensive and more stable. Some were concerned that District IT might not make hosting of online classes as high of a priority as an outside provider, IT staffing and the learning curve associated with providing such services are other concerns. Eric Ichon mentioned that his understanding is that Michael Cooperman is doing his own hosting for Moodle at Pierce and suggested tabling this discussion until Michael can report on his experiences. In addition, he reminded the Committee that we have agreed to reconsider our CMS recommendation annually. Joe mentioned that LASC has outsourced their faculty website hosting.

Online Student Orientation Update

Joe brought up the possibility or making an online student orientation course a prerequisite to other online courses. However, John Clerx reminded us that Title V requires open access to all course without prerequisites and that prerequisites are course, not section, specific. In short, although currently there is no way to make such a prerequisite solely for online sections of courses, online instructors can make such an orientation a required lesson in their classes. Pamela suggested that this initial lesson requirement could be automatically included on DE Addendum forms.

This topic was tabled until the next meeting as neither of the sub-committee members, Dr. Paul McKenna and David Jordan, were able to attend today.

LAColleges.net

John informed us that the District may host a web-based degree audit system. To do so individual colleges will need to include their catalog information. Eric asked if courses with online sections could be flagged as such. Also, is there some interface with Protocol that could facilitate this process? Hosting of the website listing all online LACCD courses by the District will have to be considered by Tony Tortoric.

District-wide Applications

John clarified that we are not implementing a district-wide application. Instead once students apply at one college in the District they will be able to enroll in classes at any college in the District. District colleges already honor each other’s general education requirements. The new process should be in place by fall 2007.

Campus Distance Education Committees

Eric Ichon was asked by the WLAC Academic Senate to determine how the AFT recommended Distance/Distributed Education Committees have been established at each College.

At LACC the Committee serves as a sub-committee of the Educational Planning Committee which reports to the Academic Senate. The Committee includes Academic Senate, Curriculum Committee and AFT representation.

LAPC is establishing a committee to make recommendations regarding online classes and course management systems.

LASC’s Technology Committee, a joint faculty/staff committee, deals with DE issues and reports to the College President.

LAPC’s Technology and Curriculum Committee’s discuss DE issues, but their work is not coordinated.

LATT’s Committee reports to the Academic Senate based on a MOU between the Senate and the AFT ensuring AFT representation. The Committee also works closely with the Curriculum Committee. There is a D/DL subcommittee which reports to both the Curriculum and D/DL Committee.

Online instructor evaluation and how to ensure online course quality is one of the topics being considered by these Committees. Richard mentioned the need for a regarding quality control of for online course content. Such evaluation could be done by a tenured instructor, the Department Chair and a support staff member from IT. Joe expressed concern that requirements for online course evaluation should parallel those for on-campus course evaluation. Linda referred us to Article 16 G. of the AFT contract, Chris mentioned Ruth Clark’s work in this area and Joe mentioned Cerro Cosa’s 17 unit online instructor certification.

Linda mentioned another issue that several colleges need to address; the submission of “substantial change” requests to WASC.

ETUDES Classic Payment Update

John Clerx informed us that the Cabinet has approved our recommendation regarding reimbursement for ETUDES Classic and ETUDES Alliance fees to individual colleges using TTIP funds. He suggested we invite Tony Tortoric with District IT to our next meeting to determine how implement this decision.

Committee Mission Statement

Eric thanked Richard for his mission statement proposal (below), which will be discussed at our next meeting.

Los Angeles Community College

Distance Education Committee Mission Statement

The mission of the Los Angeles Community College district is to extend access to high quality educational opportunities to learners seeking to maximize their personal and professional potential. This mission is fulfilled through innovative programs that are responsive to the needs of individual learners and involve active, engaging, challenging, and relevant learning experiences offered in a variety of delivery systems.

Being committed to learner success, the Distance Education committee is dedicated to providing valuable resources and referral information that assists faculty, staff and the district the ability to provide quality education, enrich lives and build futures through innovative programs and services, and training faculty and staff in the use of online technology.

Our next meeting will be held on Monday, June 19th at 1:30 p.m. via CCCConfer.

The following topics will be discussed:

ETUDES Classic reimbursement mechanism – Tony Tortorice

Online Student Orientation Update – Dr. Paul McKenna & David Jordan

Committee Mission Statement

Future meeting dates, times and methods (i.e. videoconferencing?)