Online Education Committee

Attendees: Cheridy Aduviri, Nancy Allen, Stefanie Buck, Raven Chakerian, Stephen Redfield, Shannon Riggs, Lisa Templeton 

Absent:  Vipin Arora, Marita Barth, Lisa Ganio, Merlynn Lindgren, Jason Sarkozi-Forfinski

Committee membership updates:  Undergraduate student, Merlynn Lindgren (Agricultural Sciences) and graduate student, Jason Sarkozi Farfinski (Applied Anthropology) are now official voting members!

 

Possible Change to Standing Rules discussed:  (from Vickie Nunnemaker, special assistant to Faculty Senate President) “It has been several years since either the Budgets & Fiscal Planning Committee or Curriculum Council have had members who were willing to serve on another committee. You might consider removing them from the Standing Rules, but send the respective chairs your agendas and minutes so they can see what issues the committee is considering”.

-Vickie will contact chairs of these committees and ask their stance on participation in our committee

-The OEC discussed what the original purpose of adding ex-officio members from these committees was and whether or not we would like to more aggressively pursue having representation at our meetings

-OEC decided to wait for input from chairs of these committees before voting to remove or maintain them as members

 

Hybrid Education:

-Committee had extensive discussion on hybrid education including the issue of how to define it, whether or not to include it in the scope of the committee, whether to limit the scope of the committee to only those hybrid courses officially designated as such in the catalog, etc.

-The issue was brought up that perhaps a separate faculty senate committee for Hybrid Education should be formed

-We discussed the need for enhanced faculty training for faculty teaching hybrid courses not under the umbrella of Ecampus courses (Lisa clarified that not all officially designated hybrid courses are Ecampus courses and Stephen brought up that not all faculty using hybrid methodology in their courses have officially designated hybrid courses.  How do we support faculty in these situations?)  

-All voting members that were present voted in agreement to include hybrid education in the scope of the committee and to propose an update to the Faculty Senate that changes the wording of the “Scope of the Committee” Policy so that (1) “distance education” is changed to “online education” and (2) hybrid education is included in the definition of online education

-Raven and Nancy agreed to work on rewording the definition for group approval (which would in turn need to be approved by the faculty senate)

-All agreed that this rewording can wait until we deal with more immediate issues (survey, code of conduct)

-This discussion also touched on the issue of the amount of support on-campus faculty receive compared to that of Ecampus faculty.  How can we figure out a better way for faculty teaching on-campus courses to get the same quantity and quality of training we get in Ecampus?

 

Recap from Raven’s meeting with Lisa Templeton

-no standardized definition of online education is used at Ecampus (follow up from our last OEC meeting in which we agreed to seek this information)

-OEC committee has also struggled to find identity/purpose “one year, we spent the entire year discussing our title”  “another year we spent the entire year talking about what our charge as a committee was”.

-In light of this, the committee agreed that we should try to veer away from spending all our

 time on issues like this and look for a balance between continually discussing our

 purpose/identity/policies and working on clear, tangible, immediate tasks

-Suggestions: 

-Focus on intellectual property as this is an important and complicated issue that lacks clarity and easy answers.   If the OEC can help tackle this issue in any way the Extended Campus will be grateful.  In general, they are trying to stick with the University’s rules and working with the Office of General Counsel. 

-A suggestion was made by a committee member that someone from the Office of General Council present at one of our meetings regarding intellectual property issues related to online education at OSU.

-Look into establishing methods/policies for checking up/assuring quality of instructor  

  presence/delivery standards in online courses (Ecampus takes care of design side)

-How can our committee contribute to making this happen?  A suggestion was made  

 that we draft a series of recommendations and a “how to” document for reviewing

 online courses.  Shannon Riggs has a document the Extended Campus provides as 

 guidelines for quality online course delivery.  Raven has a resource list from a presentation she gave on online course reviews at last year’s Faculty Forum. 

-Questions:

-Does online teaching count the same as on-campus teaching in regard to promotion  

 & tenure?  Are recommendations being followed?  Was catalog ever changed?

          -Raven will meet with Promotion and Tenure Committee November 4^th to discuss this. 

 Stephen brought up that online course development should be evaluated for 

 Promotion and tenure in addition to online course teaching.

-Can Student Evaluations be used to look for trends in online teaching methodology? 

-Can our committee help with testing technology?  (learn@oregonstate advisory committee Unizen grant example)

 

Student Code of Conduct (from Shannon Riggs):

Shannon introduced issue:  Student Code of Conduct needs to be updated to reflect online environments

-Committee agreed that we will work on this task in our January meeting and will draft a series of recommendations for updating the Code  

-Raven will contact Jill Childers and Jessie Nelson to let them know we will be working on this project

-A suggestion was made to create a Google Doc that we can collaborate on and make suggestions on for revisions.

 

Update from Stephen:  Stephen discussed our proposed faculty survey to CS online group including advisors, program coordinator, program lead, instructors and industry relations.  They had recommendations, comments and questions for us regarding the survey (see attached “Discussion with CS Online Group”)

-from this discussion came the question of whether we should have an ex-officio member from the Center for Teaching and Learning.  In light of our discussions on hybrid teaching, promotion and tenure, course development etc., the committee agreed this would be a good idea.  Raven will send a request to Vickie but we will wait until we finalize our discussion on whether or not to remove the other ex-officio members in order to submit one request at a time

-this discussion also touched on a need for better training or TA’s that teach online.  How can we standardize this?  Are TA’s required to take the online workshop from Ecampus “Teaching an Online Course”?

 

Survey updates and next steps:

-(from Lisa) no baseline date already collected of this type that she knows of

- in our December meeting we will have a working meeting in which we will come up with a draft of our survey questions to be submitted to the faculty senate for approval.  The idea will be to come with a list of what it is exactly that we want to find out with the survey.  We will list this information and then break into pairs to formulate questions for the survey

-we discussed hiring Lydia Newton in Statistics to help design the survey when we get to that point and need to find out if there is any funding for us to use for that

 

Pending Activities and Next Steps:

-Scheduling: Raven will send an email asking for availability for the first two weeks of December

-December Meeting:  Working Meeting to Draft Survey (Projected distribution in winter term after Faculty Senate approval, edits, feedback)

-January Meeting: Working Meeting to draft recommendations for Student Code of Conduct.  Email Jill Childers and Jessie Nelson before then (Raven).  Create shared google doc with Code of Conduct that we can all add suggestions to

-OEC Policy Revisions:  wording of “distance education” and exclusion of hybrid education in “Scope of Committee” policy

-Questions of Promotion & Tenure:  Attend P&T Committee meeting and seek answers as to how online course teaching and, especially, online course development is considered and evaluated for P&T

-Online Course Reviews Recommendations: Draft a how-to document with recommendations and examples of how to carry out online course reviews; piggy back of Shannon’s document and Raven’s presentation from Forum.  (Keep promotion and tenure requirements in mind and thinking about how this review can be documented; be productive; be meaningful, etc.)

-Intellectual Property: Host someone from the Office of General Council at one of our meetings to discuss intellectual property

-Standing Rules Changes: Remove Budgets & Fiscal Planning Committee and Curriculum Council ex-officio members from Standing Rules (?); Add ex-officio member from Center for Teaching and Learning (?)

 

 

 

 

 

Discussion with CS Online Group
(includes advisors, program coordinator, program lead, instructors, industry relations)

Suggestions:

• Survey:  Include questions about best practices each department has discovered which might improve all department programs
• Survey:  Ask students as well.
• Survey:  There is a course development class through eCampus. Survey this class (as an assignment in the class) – who runs it? Karen Watte? Shannon? Melanie?
• Survey:  Make sure to include Advisors & Admissions – other departments are often arranged such that they have classes but not a program
• Talk with new assistant dean for online learning.
• Talk to school heads – find out future plans? What support structures do you have in place? Any consistency? Do we want consistency?
• Data-driven decision making
• Research-based input to best practices, possibly leading to… (see Questions)

 

Comments:

• OSU just partnered with Center for Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning – (CIRTL) Jessica Beck
• OEC membership:  CTL (center for teaching and learning) membership (maybe ex officio?)

 

Questions:

• Departments who aren’t teaching online – why not?
• Does development of an online class count towards P&T?
• Should we work with Ecampus to put together a Best-Practices guidelines? (OnlineCS has an Instructor Guidelines document) but not just instruction – also the support structure.
• TA Training for online courses?