Online Education Committee

Voting members present: Cheridy Aduviri, Nancy Allen, Marita Barth, Raven Chakerian, Stephen Redfield, Shannon Riggs
Ex-officio member present: University Libraries – Stefanie Buck
Guest: Shannon Riggs

 

Membership Updates

• Announcement: Tom Miller has agreed to represent the Curriculum Council as an ex-officio, non-voting member to the Online Education Committee. Tom has been subscribed to the OEC mailing list.
• Potential OEC member from Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL)
  • Discussed revising OEC Standing Rules to include a member from the Center for Teaching and Learning and all agreed this was important given that the OEC also voted to include hybrid education within the scope of the committee.
  • Committee reviewed and unanimously approved the attached proposed Standing Rules changes and rationale (see final page of this document).
  • Process for review of the proposed changes was discussed: Raven will send proposal to Special Assistant to Faculty Senate President > Spec. Assist. submits to the Committee on Committees for review and approval (may ask for clarification from OEC chair) > proposal returned to Spec. Assist. who then puts it on Executive Committee agenda for approval > proposal presented to the Senate by the Committee on Committees chair for final approval.
  • Discussed need to move quickly. Committee on Committees will soon present a number of proposed Standing Rules revisions to the Senate as a group.
  • OEC members unanimously agreed to propose the CTL member as an ex-officio, non-voting member, similar to the committee representation from the Extended campus.

 

Survey

• Hybrid revisions complete
• Discussed quotes for assistance from the Survey Research Center (Lydia Newton): $680 basic service, "reviewed and ready to launch" or $6200 comprehensive service "survey design, programming, email list management and recruitment, data coding and verification, basic frequency analysis with some cross tabulations or grouping of responses, and report of methods and results."

• Discussed alternatives for moving forward if the Faculty Senate does not approve funding for assistance from the Survey Research Center.
• Raven already reached out to the Center for Teaching and Learning; no funding available through them.
• Lisa Templeton was also contacted. She did not know if funding through Ecampus was possible but recommended that we first get the survey approved by the Faculty Senate Executive Committee and then check back with her.
• Several faculty members from outside our committee have been identified and contacted as “external” reviewers that can give us feedback on the design, wording, objective-questionnaire alignment, etc.
  • Katie Linder, Research Director for Ecampus, was contacted but was away for the week at a conference. 
  • Tasha Biesinger, Instructional Technology Specialist, provided detailed feedback (see below).
• Tasha Biesinger’s feedback was looked at and discussed in detail:

• Easy changes to wording were discussed and completed.
• Some revisions will need further discussion as time did not allow for a solution to be agreed on.

• Discussed plan to present/discuss survey at Faculty Senate Executive Committee meeting in order to seek approval for distribution: most likely meeting will be early in Spring term

• Chair asked for members who were interested in attending the meeting:
  • Steven volunteered;
  • Other OEC members invited to follow up by email if they are interested in attending as well.
• Chair asked if there was other business the committee wanted brought to the Executive Committee when we attend their meeting.

• All members agreed that it would be a good idea to prepare a simple report summarizing our activities thus far

 

Promotion and Tenure Sub-Committee Report – Marita Barth, Chair

• Subcommittee discussed the following:

• Best method for setting up peer-observation of hybrid and online courses (Development vs Facilitation; Guidelines/Recommendations).
• Concerns about what people are being asked to submit for review (e.g., email conversations).
• Showcasing Quality Matters (QM) in the dossier; raising awareness of QM with P&T committee.
• ESETS-research shows online ESETS are lower; only first two questions looked at in P&T; some questions not applicable to online or hybrid classes; potential of creating recommendations for how to add your own questions for online course ESETs and then how to showcase the results in your dossier; can Ecampus ESETS be compared only to other Ecampus courses in the department instead of department wide?
• Getting recognition for developing courses that are then taught by others.
• Issues related to finding external reviewers that are both experts in the discipline as well as knowledgeable about online education; QM as potential resource for this.
• Removing barriers to providing access to course content (if appropriate) for external reviewers; can Ecampus make a hosted site?
• Student Letters – staying connected with Ecampus students to get a student letter; many are not OSU students and just take a class or two online to supplement their home institutions (don’t check OSU email anymore).

• Subcommittee will present at Ecampus forum in May on strategies for promoting yourself professionally as an online educator.

 

OEC Revisions to Policy of the Faculty Senate Distance Education Committee

The following revisions to OEC policies were unanimously approved by the OEC and will be presented to the Faculty Senate Executive Committee for review/approval (need EC approval before posting changes online) 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)

 

Intellectual Property

• Discussed the importance of this topic for faculty that develop Ecampus courses and the fact that it was specifically brought to us by a faculty member.
• Stephen brought up the issue of a recent University policy banning faculty members from requiring their own textbooks for their courses. This has affected the income generated by some professors using their etextbooks through the Top Hat teaching platform.
• Discussed the general lack of clarity on this topic at OSU and in online education in general.

• As a general rule, our discussion produced the understanding that materials produced through Ecampus are considered to be under joint ownership of both the faculty member that created the materials and Ecampus as they provided the support and resources to do so (this means faculty members can “take the materials with them” if they leave OSU, but OSU can continue to use them in the OSU courses they were developed for).
• Ecampus is in ongoing discussions with the General Counsel to try to clarify this topic.
• Committee will continue to stay abreast on national issues of intellectual property in online education.
• OEC chair will draft an email summarizing our discussions related to this topic to the faculty member that originally brought the issue of intellectual property to the attention of the OEC (Shannon will revise it to make sure summary of Ecampus discussions with the General Counsel is accurately reflected).

 

Ongoing Activities/Pending Business/Announcements

• Scheduling: Watch for Doodle poll for April meeting and possible Survey Subcommittee meeting.
• Questions of Promotion & Tenure: Seek answers as to how online course teaching and, especially, online course development is currently considered and evaluated for P&T.
• Computing Resources Committee: Interested in connecting with us to see how our committees can work together (they focus on hard/software available to faculty).

 

 

Note: Blue, shaded text indicates proposed additions and shaded, strike-through text indicates proposed deletions.

 

Online Education Committee

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.