Piedmont Virginia Community College    10:00 a.m.

Attendees:

Kristen Kelly                         Mary Clare DiGiacomo

Mark Nelson                         Sarah Brown

Leslie Smith                          Scott Langhorst

John Downey                        Sue Ann Curran

Inez Farrell                          Rebecca Blankenship

Steve Sachs                         Shelia Hobbs

Jamie Shetrone                    Susan Kennedy

Stacy Harris

Meeting Dates

          John went over the agreed upon dates for future meetings and asked if there were any known conflicts with those dates.   He stressed the importance of following through on meeting date times despite conflicts with numerous VCCS and college sponsored events.  Sue Ann agreed to place the 2006 dates on the VCCS calendar.  John agreed to forward the dates to Monty and Neil’s administrative assistants to place on their schedules early.  Mary Clare suggested we ask for substitutes be sent to DDLC meetings if the member is unavailable. Discussion resulted on the pros and cons of substitute members.  No formal recommendation was made in this regard.  The meeting dates for 2006 are: February 3, 2006; March 31, 2006; June 2, 2006.

DL Survey

             Monty asked John to chair a DL survey committee to create an instrument that will be administered to five colleges (as a pilot). The purpose of the pilot administration at five colleges is to test the survey questions and prepare a final survey that will be administered to all (or a random sample of all) VCCS asynchronous students next semester.  The purpose of the completed survey that will be administered next Spring, will be to gather data regarding student’s experience in distance learning in the VCCS.  The survey is meant to loosely parallel the CCSSE survey of student engagement that was administered to a random sample of VCCS traditional classroom students last April.  Students enrolled in asynchronous classes were omitted from that survey due to the design of the administration procedures.  The goal is for asynchronous distance learning students in the VCCS to complete the survey once every three years, just as the CCSSE is scheduled to be administered to synchronous students every three years.  Bob Vawter is serving as staff to the committee from the VCCS and is doing the bulk of the work in administering the survey.

             John emphasized that the pilot study is meant to test the questions and the administration procedure.  However tempting, he is trying to avoid the interpretation of any data collected as representative of VCCS asynchronous students since the pilot does not randomly select a sample from all VCCS colleges.  When the final survey is administered next Spring, that data will be used to determine what asynchronous students report their experiences to be

             John distributed a copy of the survey and asked for any suggestions. 

Scott indicated that the survey may be too long for students to complete. 

Steve Sachs reminded members that students take classes in both traditional and asynchronous means and that the survey may not reflect that fact.  Steve also cautioned that query data from PeopleSoft may not always be accurate.  John emphasized the same and that queries run in Peoplesoft may show different results each time they are run.  John indicated that when the VCCS institutional effectiveness department is fully staffed, improvements in such data can be expected.  The key is whether RADDS or its successor will become available for reliable data analysis on an ongoing basis.  The issue of inconsistent course coding is also related to this issue.  Scott indicated that in addition to coding problems, VCCS colleges have not agreed on common definitions of distance, hybrid and traditional courses.  Sarah suggested that many coding problems may reflect communication issues within and across VCCS colleges.  John pointed out that even at a small school like BRCC, course coding across divisions is not always consistent.  Scott pointed out that the Student Services committee of Vice Presidents and Provosts will be talking about coding issues at ASAC in December.   Sue Ann indicated that consistency of definition and coding would be helpful for both research and administration issues related to distance and distributed learning.

John summarized the discussion by pointing out the three prong problem:

1.    How do we define distance and distributed courses across the VCCS?

2.    Can PeopleSoft data entry be limited so that coding distance and distributed learning courses is limited to one data entry field?

3.    Can VCCS data entry specialists be trained across the system to ensure consistent coding practices? 

Kristen expressed the concern of administering too many surveys to on-line students.  Her college annually surveys students and she expressed the desire for a VCCS survey not to interfere with that practice.  John suggested that establishing a consistent time for the survey administration (once every three years in April, for example) would help colleges plan for the timing of their own survey administration.  He also agreed that making sure the survey length is not too long is important.  Scott suggested adding a question that gets at the access mission of the VCCS.  Can students tell us if we are providing greater access to courses than if the courses were not available via distance learning?  John reported from memory data that Bob Vawter included in his note to faculty indicating that the VCCS has seen an  enrollment declined of 8% in traditional courses and an increase in asynchronous DL enrollment of about 43%.  Steve cautioned that a survey of student engagement should be only one of several methods of answering VCCS wide questions about distance and distributed learning.  He suggested that the VCCS and individual colleges need good research projects with good methodology to determine the overall picture of how DL meets student needs.  John reported on studies that a colleague from the Center for the Study of the First Year Experience told him about.   Those studies suggest that there is little evidence regarding the impact of 50 minute, 75 minute or 3 hour classes times on student learning.  However, there is evidence that time spent on task does impact student learning outcomes.  John suggested as a follow up to Steve’s point, that student success studies across the VCCS for both traditional and distance learning modalities are important.  Steve emphasized that point…that both traditional and distance learning effectiveness need to be assessed.

Tech Council Update

John reported on the following information from the VCCS Technology Council:

VITA has released a draft of new security standards that Neil is responding to.  The cost of implementing the standards, as proposed, would be challenging.   John encouraged DDLC members to have conversations with their technology council representatives on campuses.   So far, higher education is not exempt from the new standards as we were in the past.

Steve pointed out that Higher Ed is exempt from the web standards but not the accessibility standards. The documentation required to demonstrate you are meeting the standards will be overwhelming if enacted in their present form.

Educause:  VCCS colleges who pay their dues can now become institutional members at greatly reduced prices thanks to a VCCS negotiated agreement.  

John, Scott, and Steve pointed out many of the benefits of Educause.   

All technology council members got information on how Web Surveyor will be implemented across the system. The survey administration tool can handle a variety of survey methods: essay, multiple choice, and yes/no formats. 

          Steve reported that Microsoft licenses are out. Every college can join the alliance which gives department members home use for students and faculty for a variety of software. Steve indicated that he sought clarification regarding what constituted a department at colleges and Leslie indicated that the software license requires that the software actually be taught in courses that the department administers.           

John indicated that Norton Anti-virus software is available for employee’s home use.

Several DDLC members attended the conference: “What’s next for Virginia e-Learning Environment?”  Monty spoke as a panelist.  Mary Clare agreed to post notes from the conference and Inez indicated official minutes should also be posted on the conference website soon. 

Agenda for after lunch:

·       Continue to work on Commission document. 

Portal Commission

·       Scott indicated that TCC is awaiting word from the VCCS regarding whether or not to proceed with their portal project. 

·       Subsequent discussion centered on the document of guidelines for the Blackboard Content System that the commission developed. 

·       The document emphasizes the need for colleges to make sure faculty are aware of fair use, copyright, and intellectual property policies.  Limit the use of technology to “police” those policies is not the best method for ensuring compliance. 

·       A suggestion to add the best practice of citing the originator of a document that is shared was endorsed.

·       Colleges retain responsibilities associated with implementation of Blackboard Content system including the following functions:

o      Intellectual Property Policy— a definition of “substantial use” must be consistent across colleges.  The use of Blackboard cannot be considered a substantial use at one college and not at another. DDLC members endorsed the motion that, unless agreed to by the faculty member in advance, the use of the Blackboard Academic Suite shall be regarded as an incidental use of College Resources, and NOT a substantial use.  

Scott agreed to rewrite the principles to reflect the recommendations of the DDLC, and John agreed to send them out to the entire DDLC membership list. 

Current Issues Commission:

·       Members discussed the proposal to establish a process for academic (DDLC) input into enterprise software purchases.  Mary Clare outlined her Commission’s proposal and revealed a proposed form for streamlining the process.  DDLC members endorsed the commission’s general outline pending feedback from Monty and Neil.  The proposal calls for the DDLC to review software requests that meet an Academic need.  The proposal calls for the Vice Chancellors to create a process of internal VCCS review by their staff, inform the DDLC of the results of that review, and forward any recommendations needing a vote to the Tech Council and ASAC.

Position Paper Commission

·       No further discussion was necessary, pending a formal response from Monty.

Governance Commission

·       The governance structure and role of the DDLC was discussed in light of the proposal to disband the ASAC DDLC.  John asked members to indicate if they believed they had the authority to represent their college on policy issues related to distance and distributed learning.  Most members indicated they did.  John discussed the need for the DDLC to be a policy group that functions under agreed upon guidelines established by the VCCS.  It is clear that the Technology Council has the ear of the presidents through ACOP so DDLC should function in a complimentary way to Tech council…not in competition or at cross purposes. 

·       DDLC members recommended that DDLC in ASAC be dissolved and use input from the DDLC members in its place. This item will be discussed at the December meeting of ASAC.

·       The need for more representation from Vice Presidents on the DDLC was discussed if the ASAC DDLC is dissolved as suggested.

New Business:

·       Sue Ann indicated that the Blackboard content system will be available to all users beginning Monday.

·       Scott asked whether colleges could limit availability of the content system. Sue Ann will investigate if it is possible to limit it by branding for TCC, but the anticipated answer is that it cannot be limited.

·       Access to Blackboard 5 has been limited since the end of the summer, but all access will be turned off on December 31^st, as previously announced.

·       Sue Ann announced that one additional training session for new Blackboard System Administrators will be held on December 14 and 15. She emphasized the policy that any system administrators who are new to our college they must be trained in order to be granted administrative rights.  After December, colleges will be responsible for ensuring new employees have that training from Blackboard’s on-line course or from their in-person training held periodically in Washington DC.

·       Mary Clare suggested that PeopleSoft administrators need to be held to the same training standard as Blackboard administrators in order to avoid administration mistakes. 

·       Sue Ann announced plans for a Blackboard Administrator’s meeting to be held on December 16, 2005.  Contact learn@vccs.edu for more information.