Districtwide Distance Education Steering Committee Minutes for Monday, February 8, 2010 12:00-1:30 p.m. Continuing Education Room 112

Attendees

Hank Beaver, Melody Graveen, Bill Craft, Gwyn Enright, Fred Garces, Roger Gee, Dave Giberson, Andrea Henne, Mary Kingsley, Joe McGerald, Sandra Pesce, Mary Prine, Gerald Ramsey, Leslie Shimazaki, Brian Sos, Susan Schwarz, Mary Strobbe and Jim Wales.

Minutes

The Committee reviewed the minutes from the December 14, 2009, meeting. Jim moved to approve the minutes and Bill seconded. The minutes were voted approved. All minutes are posted to http://www.sdccdonline.net/handbook/minutes.htm.

Update from the Colleges and Continuing Education

Fred reported that he is working with Miramar College’s Academic Senate President on a plagiarism-detection presentation to the Senate Executive Committee, followed by a presentation to the Academic Senate on March 2. Fred’s presentation will include results he received when surveying faculty where he found that 56% preferred TurnItIn, 40% would use SafeAssign and 4% would choose another alternative. He has sent out another email providing more information on the systems available. Andrea reminded the group that support for a Districtwide TurnItIn license would be much stronger if formally requested by all Academic Senates. Fred shared that he has received confirmation from Francine McCorkell agreeing to showcase her course in the upcoming Miramar College Online Faculty Showcase this Spring. Fred also mentioned that he and Angela Romero will be chairing the Miramar Distance Education Committee this Spring.

Joe reported that he will be meeting with Brian Ellison tomorrow to discuss the possible transition of Continuing Education’s online courses to the fee-based Community Education program. Joe also discussed the importance of differentiating between online and partially online courses when reporting number of courses, explaining that if a course has both an oncampus and online component it must be identified with two different CRNs. Joe relayed that he will not have the student count for Spring 2010 until instructors turn in their course rosters. Leslie reported Continuing Education’s Online Faculty Showcase will feature Claudia Tornsaufer and that Mary Prine will act as Continuing Education’s administrator for EduStream.

Hank reported that he has continued his work to provide support for faculty wanting to add video elements to their course. He shared a story with the group of a personal experience where his retention grew significantly after the introduction of video to his own course. Hank is excited about his work with high school students at Mesa College teaching them the aspects of video production and the use of Dragon Naturally Speaking. Once the students are ready, Hank plans on providing workshops to faculty across disciplines on how to enhance their course using video content. Mary P. asked if the content of the videos produced would be shared Districtwide; Hank answered that would be possible with instructor approval. Dave shared that the Instructional Design Staff always asks instructors if they would like to share their content as an open resource with the District’s distance learning community.

Bill commented that this semester he asked his students what they felt was the most bothersome about using the internet. Some of the answers he shared are 1) Information is too hard to find on your (Mesa’s) website. 2) Reg-e is difficult and cumbersome. 3) When I use other websites I don’t have to update my settings, why is your site so difficult? Bill will forward these comments to Kent Keyser. Bill also suggested that Karen Owens’s annual ‘Web Usability’ course may be the perfect arena to acquire feedback on proposed Course Management Systems.

Gwyn reported that City College’s has been working on a Substantive Change Proposal (SCP) to be submitted to the ACCJC and hopes for finalization by mid-February. The requirement for the SCP occurred when more than 50% of the institution’s degrees and certificates were offered online. A total of 57 degrees and certificates are proposed for approval to be offered through distance education. City’s SCP acknowledges the current student demand for online courses and credits SDCCD Online Learning Pathways for providing the support that students and faculty rely on. Gwyn reported that she has planned City College’s Online Faculty Showcase that will highlight Susan Hasegawa’s History/Political Science courses. Gwyn also plans to continue her ‘Just One Thing’ brownbag workshops which have been scheduled for February 25, March 25, and April 29.

Section Status Report and Enrollment Report for Spring 2010

Andrea provided the Committee with the Section Status Report. Courses currently slated to run for Spring 2010 are City College–145 course sections, Mesa College–186 course sections, Miramar College–120 course sections, and Continuing Education-16 course sections. Andrea also read the enrollment report which indicated a 100% fill rate and 17,293 registrations for District online courses for Spring 2010. Andrea reported that SDCCD Online Learning Pathways is serving 467 online courses and 601 on-campus courses. Andrea shared that District IT loaded 31,133 students into Blackboard Vista at the beginning of Spring 2010 session start.

Spring 2010 Online Faculty Showcases

The Spring 2010 Online Faculty Showcases have been confirmed and announced as follows:

City College – Friday, April 9, 12:30 – 2 p.m., Presenter: Susan Hasegawa Mesa College – Friday, April 16, 12:30 – 2 p.m., Presenter: TBA Miramar College – Friday, April 23, 12:30 – 2 p.m., Presenter: Francine McCorkell Continuing Education – Friday, April 20, 12:30 – 2 p.m., Presenter: Claudia Tornsaufer

Course Management System (CMS) Review and Strategic Planning (http://www.sdccdonline.net/faculty)

Andrea reviewed the upcoming sessions of Course Management System review. Scheduled for February 19, 2010, 8:00-11:00 a.m., Mesa College LRC 432, will be the Sakai CMS review and hands-on demonstration. Also scheduled is the Epsilen CMS review webinar on March 19, 2010, 10 a.m. – noon. She anticipates Blackboard being ready to reveal their new product Blackboard 9.1 in early April.

EduStream Site Administrators Site administrators have been selected for each college and Continuing Education as follows: City College - Sandra Pesce; Mesa College – Hank Beaver; Miramar College – Fred Garces, Kurt Hill, and Todd Williams; and Continuing Education – Mary Prine and Joe McGerald. Also available for support and site administration are Andrea Henne, Dave Giberson, Katie Palacios, and Paula Miranda of SDCCD Online Learning Pathways. Dave reminded the Committee that the addition of the EduStream resource has provided each institution with an extra 100 GB of storage space; this is in addition to the District’s existing Online2 media server. Andrea reminded the group that there are stringent accessibility requirements for materials hosted on the EduStream server.

Open Forum

Andrea passed around the 7th Annual New Horizon Report from the New Media Consortium. The group agreed that the students are constantly driving the need for more advanced technologies. Some things to look for in the future are e-books, different applications using GPS, and gesture-based computing.

Roger asked if any CMS had the ability to email student mobile devices. Dave responded that he did not know of any, but such a system would require both internal and external emailing capability. Jim noted that Blackboard does have an app for i-phone/i-pod, but it is not currently in use. Roger also commented that he has been using the blog feature in his course and is much happier with the blog feature, compared to the threaded discussion feature.

Next Meeting: Monday, March 15, 12:00-1:30 p.m., Mesa College LRC 435

Respectfully Submitted By Mary Kingsley