Districtwide Distance Education Steering Committee (DDESC)
Minutes for
Monday, April 16, 2012
12:00-1:30 p.m.
City College D-102
Attendees
Bill Craft, Gwyn Enright, Fred Garces, Roger Gee, Dave Giberson, Alison Steinberg Gurganus, Andrea Henne, Mary Kingsley, Katie Palacios, Sandra Pesce, Joe Safdie, and Jim Wales
Minutes
The Committee reviewed the minutes from the March 12, 2012, meeting. Roger moved to approve the minutes, and Alison seconded. All minutes are posted to http://www.sdccdonline.net/handbook/minutes.htm.
Handouts
Andrea provided the following handouts ‘Southern California Technology in Education Conference,’ ‘Online Student Panel Flyer,’ and ‘Open Educational Resources Updates.’
Updates from the Colleges and Continuing Education
Fred reported that the Miramar College Academic Senate will be meeting tomorrow. Fred expects that the Committee will vote to ‘Highly Recommend’ completion of the OFTCP training by 2013. Andrea provided the group an explanation that if an instructor earns over 450 points in the training course they are eligible to receive 20 hours flex credit. To receive the Online Faculty Training certification the instructor must successfully complete the entire course including the Certification Survey. Partial flex credit would be determined on a case-by-case basis. Fred announced his upcoming workshop ‘Apple: Mobile Learning in the 21st Century: Flex# 66183 on April 27, 9:00-10:30am, Miramar W-246. Apple Representative, Tim Ryan or Richard Bonner will give a presentation on mobile learning. A few of the topics they will address are, how to activate the accessibility functions in Apple devices, iTunesU for SDCCD, ipad in the classroom, itextbooks, and the new authoring tool, iBook Author.
Jim discussed Mesa College Online Counseling. He said that the concept is not being advertised during the transition of the Mesa VPSS. Joe shared that he currently has two students confirmed for Mesa’s Online Student Panel workshop this Friday. Joe will be sending out an email to Mesa DL in hopes to boost attendance. Joe reported that contact with faculty is down to about one-third of the contact he had with faculty in the fall.
Gwyn shared that she has sent out a list of eight Just One Thing workshops that have been scheduled for the Spring. The list was cleverly presented on a ‘menu’ of 30 minute topics which would help instructors enhance their Blackboard courses. The workshops are held Fridays 8:00am-12:00pm, and Mondays from 1:00-4:00pm. She reported that she has completed two of the eight workshops and so far the feedback has been very positive. Gwyn is considering a possible May workshop where faculty can gather to exchange ideas about online content delivery.
There was a group discussion started by Gwyn regarding Oncampus students who increasingly are being asked to have access to online materials. She explained that it was once the duty of the traditional student to attend class, now some instructors are requiring students to access their syllabus, assignments, and even exams online. Gwyn brought up concerns that the classroom environment is changing and the needs of all students must be considered. She mentioned that rarely does an instructor have the time to tutor a student on how to login and navigate Blackboard. Gwyn suggests that a separate student training course be made available at the start of each semester. Andrea reminded the group that SDCCD OLP provides student orientations and a sample course for all Blackboard users; she added that she will take a look at the different possibilities to assist students. She also said that all oncampus course templates have student orientation and training information on the hompage, including links to Blackboard OnDemand training. It was suggested that Andrea add more information to help faculty assist students to the auto-reply message that is provided when an instructor requests an oncampus shell. Dave told the group that one of his goals this year is to enhance the student training website and make sure that the students are able to access the help that is available to them.
Blackboard Connect with Brad Mauro of Bb
At 12:30 Brad Mauro provided a demonstration overview of Blackboard Connect’s abilities and features. Blackboard Connect helps faculty reach students on their mobile devices with text and voice messaging from within their Blackboard Learn course environment. The Connect Notify System includes both emergency and non-emergency notifications. The system allows automatic course notifications, instructor-initiated notifications, and institutional notifications. The students are allowed to personalize and adapt their profile to their choosing. For example a student can choose to only receive notifications of new assignments, or they could choose to receive notifications of new assignments, announcements, graded assignments, to name only a few. Instructors can set delivery windows assigning times for set deliveries and can send to individual students, selected students, or to all students. The system administrator chooses all default settings and maintains control. The system has no impact on the performance of Blackboard Learn. Blackboard Connect receives updates from Blackboard Learn hourly and relies on its own resources to function. Brad offered to allow SDCCD to load Connect in a Test Environment. Andrea shared that the license for Connect would cost approximately $7,500 per year. The group discussed that the cost seemed reasonable if the utilization could be implemented. Alison shared that as a student-user of Blackboard she would be pleased with the auto-notification system, rather than having to constantly check Blackboard for what’s new.
More information on Connect can be found at:
Connect for Learn Demo Video: http://www.tinyurl.com/bbconnect-learn
Connect for Learn PDF: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13476908/Bb_Connect_Learn.pdf
Spring Workshops
Student Panel Discussion at Mesa College: Mesa College, Flex#66277. Informative one-hour student panel discussing the pros and cons of online learning.
Mobile Learning with Apple: Friday, April 27, 9:00-10:30am, Miramar College W246, District Flex #66183. The theme will be mobile learning, the iPad, iPhone, iTouch, dynamic eBook authoring, textbook from iTunes.
Just One Thing to Add to your Bb Shell: Mondays 1:00-4:00pm and Fridays 8:00am-12:00pm, City College. Online instructors share ideas and strategies that have helped them succeed in the online teaching environment.
Faculty Training Status
Andrea reported that about 22% of online instructors have completed the Online Faculty Training Certification Program (OFTCP) course. There are 69 District instructors that have received their certifications. There are 76 instructors that have started the training, but have not yet finished. Also, there are 59 enrolled in the course, but have never started; Instructors who have not completed the course will be asked to finish or be moved to the new section of the course that begins in June with a new Flex number for 2012-2013. Bill reminded the group that instructors wanting to teach at Mesa in the fall must complete the training by August. Andrea continued her report adding that that there are 55 oncampus instructors who have completed the Oncampus Blackboard Training course and received their certification and 10 instructors are currently active. Andrea said that Oncampus support may be a bigger focus in the future. Oncampus use of Blackboard is seeing the largest growth area as budget cuts have restricted growth of online offerings.
TurnItIn License Renewal
Andrea reported that the District has renewed the TurnItIn software license for 2012-2013. She told the Committee that there were 52 faculty members who used the anti-plagiarism software; 3,972 students used the programs with 5,740 submissions and 2,000 graded papers.
Open Forum
Andrea provided the Open Education Resources Updates handout. The District has been a member of the California Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources and is now a member of the global Open Courseware Consortium. Andrea discussed the growing popularity of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Dave discussed the Inkling demonstration that he and Andrea attended at USD (www.inkling.com), which offers multimedia texts from medical school to business school. Bill reminded the group that the biggest value from publishers can be the quizzes and tests that come with the text. The question is whether the cost savings to the student is worth the extra 30-40 hours it would require faculty take to create their own assessment tools.
Next Meeting: Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:00-1:30 p.m., Miramar College W-248
Respectfully submitted: Mary Kingsley