TAFTCOLLEGE

March 7, 2016 AS Minutes

July 20, 2016 In 2016, Minutes

March 7, 2016 AS Minutes

Taft College Academic Senate Minutes

Monday, March 7, 2016

Cougar Conference Room

Members Present: President Geoffrey Dyer, Vice President Vicki Jacobi, Jennifer Altenhofel, Megan Andrews, Eric Berube, Paul Blake, Adam Bledsoe, Jill Brown, Joe’ll Chaidez, Bill Devine, Candace Duron, Juana Escobedo, Sharyn Eveland, Shelly Getty, Greg Golling, Leigh Golling, Abbas Jarrahian, Mike Jiles, Diane Jones, John Kopp, David Layne, Veronica Lynne Van Ry, Mariza Martinez, Janis Mendenhall, Tina Mendoza, Michelle Oja, Robin Polski, Natalie Ramirez, Stacie Rancano, Joy Reynolds, Debora Rodenhauser, Terri Smith, Lori Sundgren, Tony Thompson, Don Thornsberry, Melissa Thornsberry, and Victoria Waugh.

The meeting was called to order at 12:12 PM.

Public Commentary

  • No public commentary was offered.

Review of Feb. 17, 2016 Senate Minutes

  • The last item under “Other” should have said that Diane asked for a Faculty Association rep to be on the committee for the discontinuation of the Recreation program. This rep must not be from the Social Science division.
  • There was a request to spell out acronyms the first time they are used in the minutes.
  • Stacie Rancano made a motion to accept the minutes with these suggestions. Veronica Van Ry seconded the motion and the motion carried.

Commentary on Electronic Committee Updates

  • There were no questions or comments about the committee updates that were sent via email.

Highlights of ASCCC Accreditation Institute – Berube, Mendoza & Oja

  • All of the sessions Eric attended were related to data and Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs). The main takeaways for Eric were to hear how other colleges are responding to accreditation needs, and where we stand relative to other colleges. A lot of colleges got dinged on tying Program Review to planning, whereas we did really well.  It is Eric’s impression that we are five or six years ahead of many other colleges in terms of our planning processes. Everyone is struggling with the SLOs and how to tie SLOs into the planning process. In that respect, we are pretty much the same as everyone else.
  • The other main takeaway for Eric was the data reporting needs have increased and all of the Institutional Research (IR) offices are overwhelmed. The data needs have increased tenfold, and it is difficult to keep up.
  • Michelle Oja agreed that the importance of IR was stressed in almost all the sessions. The sessions pointed to IR as being the office that would help us with the SLOs and the accreditation standards, so we definitely need to improve our capacity there (in IR).
  • Michelle did not get the sense that we are ahead of or behind anyone on integrated planning.
  • Michelle stated that the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) seems to be trying to be slimming down the standards by having fewer of them. However, the five major ones we now have are going to be more in-depth.
  • Tina Mendoza frequently heard mention of the Online Writing Lab (OWL). In the “Effective Practices in Accreditation” session Tina attended, they mentioned that each campus should have an OWL in order to assist students who are taking online classes. We should be reaching out to our online students just as much as we do for our on-campus students.
  • Also, Tina found it interesting that they had a lot of SLOs that were tied to a lot of their agendas and to the mission overall as part of their campus.
  • A lot of the discussions at the institute were about what to do with the overwhelming amount of data, how to aggregate it, and then tie it to the needs of the institution.
  • eLumen seemed to be well thought of compared to other software that some colleges use.
  • Canvas and eLumen talk with each other so that might assist us in getting data.

Next Steps for SLOs: IEPI Innovation & Effectiveness Plan, Governance Council  Retreat Highlights, Evaluating Impacts of Resource Allocations, Draft Procedure for SLOs, & ILO Assessment – Dyer

  • We had our Institutional Effectiveness Partnership Initiative (IEPI) Peer Resource team visit on Feb. 22nd. They gave us a menu of options ahead of meeting with us. This included examples how other schools have assessment handbooks, which lay out everything they plan to do and how to do it, assessment calendars and program review documents.  During the interview we discussed professional development with SLOs, eLumen’s functionality, and linking SLOs to resource allocations.
  • The next step is to develop an Innovation & Effectiveness Plan. Eric will lead this effort. Eric has broken down all the areas of our big SLO recommendations and synthesized possible activities from the visit that we had with the IEPI team on the 22nd, and also from ideas that came out of the Governance Council retreat facilitated by Robert Pacheco on February 26th.
  • Eric has received some feedback on this plan from the Student Learning Outcomes Assessment Steering Committee (SLOASC) and is hoping to bring his latest draft to the Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) tomorrow. From there, it will go to the Academic Senate Council on the 16th, and then go to Governance Council, and finally back to the senate-of-the-whole before Brock has the ability to submit the plan to the IEPI.
  • We had the Governance Council retreat on February 26th. Robert Pacheco, an expert on SLOs assessment, facilitated the retreat. We practiced how we might determine goals based on using SLO data from another school. For one student learning outcome, we looked at five different data sources and how they were different to come up with plans on what we would do to improve that SLO.
  • Some of the ideas that came up were radical, and some were relevant to what we are doing.
  • Certain ideas, such as how we might modify our Annual Program Review form, are folded into the IEPI Innovation & Effectiveness Plan that Eric is drafting.
  • In other SLO news, the SLO board policy that we created and approved is on the board agenda for this Wednesday. Vicki is working on a draft for an Administrative Procedure to accompany that board policy. A preliminary draft went out to the SLOASC. Vicki is synthesizing their input and will bring a revised draft to the Academic Senate Council on the 16th.  If the council approves this draft, the draft procedure will come to the Senate-of-the-whole.  If it does not receive approval from the council, it will get kicked back to SLOASC.
    • The AP does not specify how many SLOs we have to assess every semester, but in its current form it asks individual programs to determine the cycle for when they plan to assess them.
  • The academic senates of two of the schools featured in the IEPU Menu of Options, Berkley City College and Santa Barbara City College, determine one institutional SLO that they plan to assess the next year. In the prior year they talk about what they want to do to increase the assessment results before they even assess. They also decide what assessment methods they want to use just for that one SLO. This is not too different from what we said we were going to do in our Educational Mater Plan, which the senate approved in 2014. To keep in line with that plan, Geoffrey asks that everyone who assesses Institutional SLOs this semester, as you are putting your assessment results into eLumen and assessing whatever other SLOs you are assessing, participate in assessing our global awareness of our Institutional SLO in the Spring. Then we can look at the results collaboratively in the senate in the Fall, and we can talk about what the results mean.  If we want to adopt the process that Berkley CC and Santa Barbara CC use, we would ask ourselves how can we focus on this outcome before we assess it. This way, we are already providing strategies to improve what we are doing. If we want to do that and stay consistent with our Educational Master Plan, that means we assess critical thinking as our Institutional level SLO in academic year 2016-2017.
  • Geoffrey would like to hear from us in April or May about things we are already doing to try to bolster that ISLO and how might we proactively plan to capture and record those data points throughout the year.

Canvas Pilot Update – Bledsoe & Layne

  • Dave Layne thanked Nicole for putting together the slides that he and Adam used in the presentation.
  • Adam compared/contrasted his experience working with Canvas vs. working with Etudes. In summary, there tends to be a little more flexibility in Canvas, but there is a learning curve in knowing how to do that. Nicole has been a big help in implementing the different features of Canvas.
  • While there is greater flexibility with setting up the course with using Canvas vs. Etudes (in setting up the navigation and the modules), this might be a con because the students will have to get used to the differences in each of their Canvas courses vs. using Etudes where the courses are all set up the same way.
  • Canvas does not have a built in Course Map as Etudes does. It is possible to create Course Maps though in Canvas. You can set up your course in a way that makes the most logical sense for your particular course.
  • Once you have your course set up in Canvas, you can copy it over to the next semester.
  • One of the nice features of Canvas is the Calendar. From a student or instructor perspective, if you have multiple courses in Canvas, activities and assignments will show up in different colors on the calendar depending on the course.  Once a student is finished with an assignment, Canvas puts a line through it to show them that assignment has been taken care of.
  • There is a big difference between Etudes and Canvas in using Discussions. Canvas uses threaded discussions. It is easier to follow a conversation within Canvas.
  • Grading is another area of difference between Etudes and Canvas. Canvas uses SpeedGrader. As an instructor, you do not have to download attached files or images that are submitted from students. A preview of the file will appear in a window and you can make comments [and annotations] on their submitted work. Students can also leave comments regarding their submission.
  • Canvas has the ability to add rubrics to SpeedGrader.
  • One negative thing about SpeedGrader is once you are in SpeedGrader, there is not a clear navigation tool to get back to the Home page. It is not intuitive on how you get back.
  • Also, in grading, Etudes has this universal grading option where you can release all grades or all submissions. There is no release option in Canvas.  It is either graded or not. The ability to adjust scores or to add universal comments to all submissions is not available in Canvas’ SpeedGrader. It is possible to accomplish some of these “universal” grading options in Canvas, but you need to go to the Gradebook to do so.
  • The course analytics within Canvas are similar to Etudes. Canvas does allow you to generate access reports for individual students. An instructor can view how many times the student viewed each page, or each module, or how many times they watched a video.
  • An instructor can also view how many students are turning in assignments on time, or late, or what the grade distributions looks like.
  • For exams or quizzes, Canvas will tell you the highest and lowest scores, the average score, the standard deviation, and the average time spent on the exam or quiz. If you have multiple-choice questions, you can look at each question and see what percent of the class got that question correct. And, if they are missing the question, what option are they most frequently choosing?
  • Canvas has a discrimination index, which can tell you whether there is a correlation between the students who got a certain question correct on an exam and the students that did well on the exam.
  • There are pros and cons to switching to Canvas. If we do switch to Canvas, there will be a learning curve and we will all be calling Nicole Avina asking for help (x7917 or navina@taftcollege.edu) on how to do different things.
  • There is an Etudes transfer tool, but sometimes things do not transfer over cleanly. Question banks can be loaded into Canvas nicely if you have the original question bank files from the publisher.
  • Michelle added that the publisher question banks seem to be more adaptable when loaded in Canvas than they ever have been in Etudes.
  • When Adam set up his course in Canvas, he started from scratch and did not attempt to transfer from another course from Etudes.
  • Dave used “Cut and Paste” to move documents and text from Etudes to his course in Canvas. He had no trouble other than with the test bank. Nicole also used this method.

AB 798/Open Educational Resources (OER) – Dyer

  • Geoffrey gave an update on the Open Educational Resources (OER) work that is happing statewide. Subsequent to the passage of AB 798, our student trustee Shoshanna Kukuliev attended the December Academic Senate meeting encouraging us to write a resolution in support of adopting OER. The rationale of this is that the expense of textbooks is a barrier to students in completing our classes. Many students are taking classes without purchasing or reading the textbooks. The state Academic Senate urged all local senates not to pass a resolution on OER until we create a plan for adopting OER despite the fact that the statewide senate has supported OER in the past. Geoffrey sent out an email that explained what we could do if we would like to adopt OER and if we want to qualify for funds to make that transition.
  • If we decide that this is something important, we have to do two things:
    • Adopt the academic senate resolution in support of adopting no cost or low cost high quality OER.
    • Work with students and administrators to create a plan that indicates our commitment to doing that and how we want to do that.
  • If we can do both of those things and have the senate approve both of them prior to June 30th, we will be eligible for one-time funds of up to $150,000 to help us implement the plan we create.
  • The Cool4Ed website (http://www.cool4ed.org/) has the existing OERs courses or textbooks that CSUs, UCs, and CCCs have collaboratively adopted.
  • You can get paid for professional development in learning how to use OER in your course(s), and for modifying your curriculum.
  • The Cool4Ed site lists OER available for classes by CID descriptors (Common Course IDs) and Transfer Model Curriculum (TMCs).

AB 288/Dual Enrollment – Devine

  • The Academic Senate Dual Enrollment Task Force met on January 29th. The committee reviewed our past practices in dual enrollment.  On the whole, the committee is pleased with the current status of the program. They analyzed the two-page handout on AB 288 to see what it might mean in relation to our current arrangements with Taft Union High School.
  • One recommendation from the committee was to change the current Special Admit form to allow high school sophomores who are not yet 16 years old to enroll in our courses.
  • The committee concluded that there was no need to enter into a partnership agreement under AB 288. There might be some opportunity to expand what we do in the current program.
  • Joy moved to investigate the possibility of expanding current dual enrollment opportunities without entering into a CCAP partnership. Mike Jiles seconded the motion. Paul asked that when this issue comes back to the senate that we spend some time reviewing what is currently being offered via dual enrollment. The motion carried.

Run-off Election between Jill Brown and Vicky Waugh for Academic Senate Council Adjunct Representative

  • At the February 17 Academic Senate Meeting, representatives for the new Academic Senate Council were elected. Of these, there was a tie vote between Jill Brown and Vicky Waugh.
  • A run-off election was held for the position. Per our new bylaws, only adjunct members of the Senate-of-the-whole were allowed to vote.
  • Veronica Van Ry, Jill Brown, and Leigh Golling voted for Jill Brown. Natalie Ramirez, Megan Andrews, Vicky Waugh, John Kopp voted for Vicky Waugh.
  • Vicky Waugh was elected to be the Academic Senate Council Adjunct representative.

Other/Open Forum

  • Darcy Bogle asked (via Geoffrey) if anyone from the AS would be willing to work on the Hall of Fame task force.
  • Diane Jones wanted us to be aware that HR pre-screened some faculty applications instead of having the faculty hiring committee do the screening. This should not be standard practice.

Meeting adjourned at 1:03 PM

Respectfully submitted by Dan Hall

3.07.16d Academic Senate Minutes