DE Senate Distance Education Subcommittee
(Subcommittee of the SCC Academic Senate)
Minutes
October 21, 2014
LRC 119
Attendees: Kandace Knudson, Daniel Gilbert-Valencia, Pam Posz, Tracey Valverde, Norman Lorenz, Nicole Woolley, Marybeth Buechner, Frank Malaret; Sheley Little, Elaine Ader
Old Business:
Kandace is currently working on diagram of flowchart to clarify layers of Distance Education regulations and processes, and the first draft will be distributed to the committee before the next meeting.
Announcements:
The District’s proposed policy, 7145, will be taken up by campus Senate at their regular meeting 10/21/14.
New Business:
- DO Policy 7145 Draft
District Senate will discuss Regular/Effective and Substantive Contact Draft Rubric today; the Union and the District are negotiatinglanguage, as this may affect the faculty contract; the policy is a response to accreditation standards. [Note: at the 10/21/14 District Academic Senate meeting, the LRCFT liaison explained that the District does not consider policy as negotiable; rather, the District and union are in ‘discussions’ about the policy.]
Kandace distributed a DRAFT of idea for a rubric to assess Regular and Substantive Contact between DE faculty and their students. The draft is a starting point for conversations. The committee concurred that:
*weas a committee make edits ASAP before more conversations at district-level occur.
* we are not certain that the language on the rubric should match the verbiage on faculty review forms or a curriculum-focused rubric, which would reside in SOCRATES. [Note: Marybeth volunteered to assist Kandace with creating acurriculum-based REC rubric.]
* we would like to meet as a group, and with Annette, sooner than our next regularly scheduled meeting.
* We would like to talk with representatives of the curriculum committee to discuss the impact and scope of REC. [Note: Kandace has been invited to and will attend a meeting 10/24/14 of the SOCRATES Advisory Group and will report back to the committee. It’s anticipated that REC will be a part of the discussion.] It might be best, the committee decided, to provide the DE curriculum subcommittee with a rubric for their evaluation of DE courses.
Other points of the discussion:
Courses or parts of courses delivered through publisher websites are a concern because students’ rights are not necessarily protected. And, published sites are not officially a method of official authentication of student identity.
The faculty union is concerned that the Regular and Effective Contact draft rubric impedes on faculty rights of determining professional and academic matters.
There is confusion about the Regular Effective and Substantive Contact Rubric, the Course Design Standards (now “guidelines,”), and LRCCD proposed Policy & Regulation 7145; these are three different documents.
- Course Design Standards/Guidelines
These will be used by Staff Development and Instructional Development in order to help faculty self-assess and improve their DE courses.
- Distance Education Program Plan
Draft of current Plan was distributed; Kandace highlighted new additions to this year’s Plan.
Professional Development opportunities and support are desired.
Discussion regarding a standardized course shell in D2L that would be created/supported by a staff member; instructors could choose to use or not.
Faculty expressed that it would be helpful to have release time to develop their courses. Norman mentioned that the Student Equity Plan might provide release time that might be appropriate for that. Instructional development time by appointment (and on a trial basis) with the instructional development assistant will be written into the program plan.
Please send Kandace input on edits for Program Plan by Friday, October 24.