Online Education Committee

Voting members present: Nancy Allen, Stefanie Buck, Raven Chakerian, Stephen Redfield
Voting members absent: Cheridy Aduviri, Vipin Arora, Marita Barth, Jason Sarkozi Farfinski
Ex-Officio members present: Lisa Templeton – Extended Campus

Membership updates

• Membership next year:
  • Discussed next year’s membership.  Anyone not continuing should contact Vickie Nunnemaker ([email protected]) so that replacements can be appointed
  • Discussed student members for next year. Both Nancy and Stephen may know of Ecampus students that live locally and could attend meetings
  • Potential OEC member from Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL)-pending approval of proposed changes to standing rules (see attached proposed changes from last meeting)

OEC “Scope of Committee” Policy Update:  Meeting with E. C. on April 28^th to discuss our proposed changes as well as the survey (see attached proposed change from last meeting)

Promotion and Tenure Sub-Committee Report: Recent meeting cancelled due to illness.  Sub-committee will meet April 25^th.  Plans underway for Ecampus Faculty Forum presentation by sub-committee.

Hybrid Report: Raven met with Cub for an update on hybrid education at OSU.  Committee agreed that it would be useful to Cub to present this information at our next OEC meeting. 

Survey:

• Possible funding updates (Stephen):  After discussing the high cost of accessing the Survey Research Center, the committee determined it was not likely funding would be approved from Ecampus or the Faculty Senate E.C.  Various survey tools that could be used to build the survey were discussed (eg. Qualtrics). Lisa suggested several people in Ecampus that had experience building surveys that could help.  Stefanie has experience with Qualtrics.
• Based on the discussion areas bulleted below, multiple questions were cut from the survey, questions restructured, goals and objectives clarified and questions aligned with the objectives
  • Need to look at each question in terms of why we are asking it and what we will do with the information once we have it. What will we, the OEC, do with the information?
  • Dividing up ranking question into multiple categories for ease of use of survey
  • Add questions that specifically address barriers to faculty working with Ecampus
• Survey will be sent to Vickie N. by April 24^th at noon and presented to the Faculty Senate Executive Committee on April 28^th at 9:30 (107 Gilkey) in order to seek approval for distribution (If time allows a report summarizing this year’s activities in the OEC  will also be presented to the E.C.)

Ongoing Activities/Pending Business/Announcements:

• Scheduling: Watch for Doodle poll for May meeting

ATTATCHMENTS

Proposed Changes to OEC Standing Rules The following revisions to the OEC Standing Rules were unanimously approved by the OEC on March 15^th, 2017 and will be presented to the Faculty Senate Executive committee for review/approval. Note: Blue text indicates proposed additions and strike-through text indicates proposed deletions.

Standing Rules: 

The Online Education Committee considers and provides recommendations to the Faculty Senate on a wide range of philosophical and technical issues considered important to faculty and students related to the role of online and hybrid education in meeting the academic mission of Oregon State University. 
The Committee consists of six Faculty, at least three of whom shall be from units or programs with existing or developing distance online and/or hybrid education courses, and two Students (preferably with distance online and/or hybrid education experience), one of whom shall be a graduate student, ideally to provide a broad representation of academic disciplines. In addition, ex-officio, non-voting members shall include one representative from each of the following: Budgets and Fiscal Planning Committee, Curriculum Council, Graduate Council, The Valley Library, the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Associate Provost of OSU Extended Campus, or designee.

Rationale: Because hybrid education falls under the scope of the Online Education Committee and because hybrid education is housed under the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), it is felt that CTL representation on the Online Education Committee is both appropriate and useful. Since the Extended Campus has an ex-officio member, it is appropriate that the Center for Teaching and Learning does as well.

Proposed Changes to OEC Scope of Committee Policy:  The following revisions to the OEC Scope of Committee Policy were unanimously approved by the OEC on March 15^th, 2017 and will be presented to the Faculty Senate Executive committee for review/approval. Note: Blue, shaded text indicates proposed additions and shaded, strike-through text indicates proposed deletions.

• Scope of Committee:
  • The Committee reviews and recommends policies on all forms of distance online and hybrid education within the University and values both competition and cooperation. (AR 2003-2004) (approved 24 Jan 05)
  • Distance Online education, for the purposes of this committee, is the learning that occurs when instructor and student are separated by space or time and communicate primarily via the application of technologies. Excluded from this definition is asynchronous course delivery for the on-campus environment. Hybrid education, for the purpose of this committee, refers to courses that include both regularly scheduled on-site classroom meetings, and significant online out-of-classroom components, that replace regularly scheduled class meeting time. (approved 29 Nov 06)