Distance Education Committee

February 27, 2006

Members Present: Pamela Atkinson (City), Linda Delzeit (Trade), Eric Ichon (West), David Jordan (Mission), Mark Lampert (Valley), Paul McKenna (ITV).

Training and Support for Faculty

Since different colleges in the District are using different course management systems (CMS) we need to determine minimum qualifications to ensure instructor proficiency for each CMS. Current LACCD instructors may already have an ETUDES Certification and those who complete the ETUDES NG training class will receive NG Certification. Foothill’s policy prohibits instructors from receiving a NG shell unless they have completed the NG training course.

@ONE offers Introduction to Teaching with WebCT Campus Edition and Introduction to Teaching with Moodle courses online.

Several colleges are using the curriculum approval process as a means to ensure online instructor proficiency. At Trade Tech online instructors must develop one third of their course content and demonstrate proficiency using the CMS of their choice before curriculum approval will be granted. New online instructors teaching an approved course for the first time must also go thru this process. At Valley College individual classes must meet accessibility requirements before they receive curriculum approval.

Trade Tech is developing an Online Instructor Handbook which Linda is willing to share with us so other Colleges can develop something similar for their instructors.

We need to establish a Help Desk administered by the District to provide online instructors with 24/7 support via phone, email and threaded discussion. If this is successful it could be used as a model for a District run Online Student Help Desk.

ETUDES NG

Since we can’t reset student passwords we should suggest some type of automatic email feature for student to retrieve forgotten passwords. We also need more information about how the survey tool can be used to administer student evaluations.

Fall 2006 Course Management Systems Update by College

*Based on M. Cooperman’s comments at our first meeting, no recent update.

Student Evaluations for Online Instructors

Linda Delzeit (Trade Tech) has created a web-based Online Student Evaluation (as suggested in the AFT Contract). She is willing to assist other Colleges in doing this by providing the HTML file to be uploaded into online classes and hosting the static text files on Trade Tech’s server. Colleges that wish to take advantage of this offer need to arrange to FTP text files for specific classes to Linda. Some colleges may want to place these files on their own server instead. Student submissions are sent via a CGI email form to a Yahoo email address where they are filtered into course folders. This process is a huge improvement from current practices, but it was agreed that there needs to be District support for the creation of a web-based online student evaluation system.

Student Support

Trade Tech is developing an Online Student Handbook which Linda is willing to share with us so other Colleges can develop something similar for their students.

Podcasting

Linda Delzeit reported that Trade Tech is using freeware to record live lectures and making them available as Podcasts. Apple offers free hosting of class lectures, for additional information see the article 'Itunes U' by Laura Ascione, Assistant Editor, eSchool News at

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=6153

Paul McKenna reported that ITV uses wireless mikes with separate channels to download lectures and converts them from wave files to MP3 files.

For additional information about audio recording, conversion and editing see River Past Multimedia Software’s website at http://www.riverpast.com

Agenda items for our next meeting via CCConfer on March 13th from 1:30 – 2:30 p.m.

Process for evaluating online faculty.

Minimum qualifications for online faculty.

April Meeting

Our April face-to-face meeting is tentatively scheduled for April 24th at 10 a.m., but lets discuss this as Monday mornings aren’t a good time for several of us. Agenda topics include:

View Cerro Coso’s Online Student Orientation CD-ROM and compare it to the CVC Online Student Orientation CD-ROM. Trade Tech and Pierce have their College orientations on their website. Perhaps the District can create an Online Student Orientation based on our input.

Use of online course templates.

Provides software for essential multimedia tasks including audio and video recording, conversion, and editing.

CategoryB2B > Multimedia Softwarewww.riverpast

Agenda topics for our next meeting via CCConfe