Demonstration Project
Demonstration Project
Learner Support Advisory Committee
Persons present: John Bober-WBCC, Hendra Djaya-WBCC, Larry Hudson-UCF, Terry Longordo-LSCC, Steve Lytle-UCF/HPA, Lucy Morse-UCF, Rusty Okoniewski-UCF, John Scarpino-SCC, Travis Spaulding-UCF, Barbara Truman-UCF
Persons absent: Russ Adkins-DBCC, Bertha Freeman-CFCC, Lynn LaBrake-UCF, John Walker-BCC
Others present: Sarah Blackmun and Steve Eskow-Electronic University
Steve Lytle, chair, opened the meeting at 9:40 am. Introductions were made and Lytle distributed the agenda, his proposed survey guidelines, the CIA handout of the Council on Instructional Affairs Ad Hoc Committee for Distance Learning and the Learner Support section of the State of Florida Master Plan (all were encouraged to read Appendix B, pages 6-15). The Consortium's e-mail account address was given out (cfche@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu) with encouragement to use it.
Lytle also announced that Keva Miller had performed research on SACS accreditation and pertinent information would be copied and forwarded to committee members as available. Lytle said that the previous meeting focused on what the group should do--this is dependent upon what services the community colleges offer--the who, what, where, when and how. The group will then focus on the positives to show what works.
Discussion continued as to what will be done with the data once it's collected and just "who" is the market. This will be better defined as the committee's work progresses.
Steve Eskow, President of the Electronic University, and his wife Sarah Blackmun, were visiting Central Florida from San Francisco Eskow introduced himself as having a community college academic background. He said he was a member of the American Association of Community Colleges and helps community colleges come on-line.
Eskow explained how the Electronic University views the delivery of services. He said there are two broad categories: Instructional Systems and the "Campus." The Instructional System involves actual curriculum development and the campus includes the services such as library, lounge, counseling, advising etc. the Electronic University helps community colleges build "campuses." Eskow continued to explain that the Instructional System has within it two parts: Tutorial and Seminar. The Tutorial component uses e-mail to allow students to communicate with their professors and each other. This also creates individual and group counseling and allows for academic advising.
The Seminar function also uses e-mail to allow group discussion through computer conferencing. Eskow said the real genius of this is the asynchronous mode where students access the discussion or seminar at their leisure. Synchronous computer conferencing can be expensive.
Eskow also explained what he called monologic and dialogic technologies. Monologic being receive only and dialogic being truly interactive. Satellite and cable TV is monologic while computer bulletin boards are dialogic. Eskow said that when you combine technologies you can have it all.
The Electronic University gives new students a "Teleguide" for an online tutorial to use their services within America On-Line. The Teleguide is a notebook with sections explaining the University, its policies and resources.
The question of who we are trying to market to arose again. Rusty diagramed the bubble of projected students showing the huge increase in FTIC (first time in college) students for the next ten years. Added to this fact is the increasing number of adult returning students.
The question still remains for the committee to investigate: what makes up the services of the learner support system. The immediate goal of the committee is to survey the current learner support systems at the Consortium institutions.
Steve Eskow's e-mail address is dreskow@aol.com
The next meeting will be Thursday, July 20th at 9:30 am. Joel Hartman, UCF's new Vice Provost of Information Technology will attend. The meeting will be at UCF in the Education building room 181-C.
The meeting was adjourned at 11:00 am.