District Distance Education Committee

Minutes of the September 25, 2007 Meeting

Present:  Pamela Atkinson, Wendy Bass, Gary Colombo, Linda Delzeit, Eric Ichon, David Jordan, Mark Lampert, Paul McKenna, Bob Richards (via phone) and Richard Skidmore.

The meeting was called to order at 10:00 AM.  Minutes of the August 14^th meeting had been distributed electronically. 

1.  Etudes Update.  Bob Richards informed the committee he is working with Kanthi Edirisinghe at District Information Technology to develop a program to request course shells.  Pam and Eric volunteered to work with Bob on the project.  There are problems with course shell in combined classes; with multiple instructors assigned to the same section, staff assignments (instructors not assigned to the class) and late assignments.  Various solutions were discussed including removing the instructor’s initials from the site requests, removing the section numbers and a combination of both.  Bob will continue to work with Pam and Eric via email.  Bob asked all coordinators to send him copies of the shell requests sent to Vivie in the last year so he can create a data base.  The program will not be completed for the Winter Intersession.  The start date to request shells for the winter term will be the end of November, the uploads will begin in December.  When student files are uploaded into Etudes it does not update changes in student’s email addresses.  Students can update or change their email addresses in Etudes in My Workspace under Account.  Lastly, Bob is completing a new Etudes-NG Job Preparation Booklet which will be distributed in the next few weeks.

2.  Proposal to Restructure the DE Committee.  David requested that item 4 be moved up so Vice Chancellor Gary Colombo could address the group.  Mr. Colombo began by discussing district-wide needs in the areas of technology, district-wide systems, software and hardware standards, technology training needs for faculty, student learning and student learning outcomes.  He presented a proposal to redefine and repurpose the DE Committee.  “There is clearly a need for an Instructional Technology Advisory Committee.  We need to move larger numbers of faculty forward with using technology.”  He discussed e-portfolios; Student Portals, citing UCLA and the ACE student portal under development at ELAC as examples.  Mr. Colombo suggested the Distance Education Committee could be expanded and refocused to help the District address these needs.  He said the proposal would also require an implementation plan with deliverable dates.  The proposal, “LACCD Instructional Technology Committee” was distributed.  He also said he had discussed the concept with David Beaulieu, President of the District Academic Senate, who was supportive of the concept.   

Much of the discussion that followed related to the purpose and function of the DDE Committee and the scope and complexity of the proposal.  Because of the broad nature of the proposal, and the changes it would require of the DE Committee, it was agreed that committee would review the proposal and it would be further discussed at the next meeting.  A subcommittee will be formed to discuss the proposal in greater detail and report back.   Mr. Colombo left the meeting at 10:45.

3.  Google Apps.  Linda Delzeit reported on her trip to Google in Mountain View.  The Trade-Tech portal is now up with Google Apps including automated g-mail accounts for students.  Plans are in place to expand the services to include online tutoring and other student support services.  David Jordan asked how other campuses can get on board.  Linda said a district contract exists for the service, if a college wanted to be added to the contract she recommended beginning by obtaining campus IT and the college president’s support.  She can provide further information to interested campuses. 

4.  @One Training.  City College will host @One Training, January 15-17.  There will be a fee ($50-75) for the participants; registration will be through @One.  Training will be on Blackboard, Moodle and Etudes-NG.  Pam said she had spoken with Vivie; Vivie is willing to consider restructuring the Etudes-NG training so participants can become certified through the training.  Pam and Wendy are going to discuss this further with Vivie.  More information on the programs will be provided as it becomes available from @One.

5.  Off campus access of ftp text files.  David asked if is possible to have access to the secure LACCD Portal to access Approot.  Access is important to assist faculty and students while the coordinator is not physically on campus; in some cases the DE Coordinator is miles from campus or may be on vacation, he said.  Bob strongly discouraged access due to the confidential information available on the site.  Pam has addressed the issue at City by training a person on campus on the use the site to assist faculty and students when she is unavailable.  Linda indicated that it is possible to obtain access off campus through the campus IT Department.  Mark will explore the possibility of obtaining access from Valley as Trade was granted access.   

6.  Adding Online Students.  David discussed the need to add students to classes after the beginning of the semester without requiring the students to come to campus to complete an Add Card.  Richard said he has similar problems at Pierce, especially when the online students are from outside of the area.  He presented a proposal to extend registration for online students through the first Saturday of the first week of classes.  West LA has a procedure wherein Eric receives email authorizations from the distance education faculty to add students to open classes.  He then gives the student information to Admissions & Records and they add the students to the class.  Bob addressed the issue of the lack of acceptance of electronic signatures.  Paul was asked to present the issue at the next Admissions & Records Committee and report back to the DE Committee.

7.  Load limits for Online teaching.  In response to a campus specific problem, Trade-Tech adopted policy that requires full-time faculty to teach at least 40% of their regular assignment on campus.  The policy is available at: 

http://lamc-ddl.pbwiki.com/f/policyload.pdf

David said the Acting Academic Vice President at Mission is looking at a similar issue at Mission and considering limiting the percentage of online classes full time faculty may teach in a regular semester.

8.   Demonstration of PodCasting.  Linda again demonstrated Pod Casting to the group.  She continues to provide faculty training at Trade; she invited members of the committee, or to send their faculty, to attend one of the training programs.                         

9.  Items from the floor.  Gary Colombo said he filed a letter on behalf of the District for the Open Education Project with the Foothill-DeAnza District.

10.  The meeting was adjourned at 12:20 PM.  

Next Meeting:  October 23, 2007, 10:00 AM, Teaching-Learning Center, LA City College