Demonstration Project
Demonstration Project
Learner Support Advisory Committee
Person present: John Bober-BCC, Donna Castellano-VCC, Hendra Djaya-BCC, Pat Fleming-CFCC, Steve Lytle-UCF/HPA, Lucy Morse-CFCHE, Rusty Okoniewski-CFCHE, John Scarpino-SCC, Renée Simpson-DBCC, Travis Spaulding-UCF, Barbara Truman-CFCHE
Steve Lytle opened the meeting at 9:40 am and members made introductions. He asked Lucy Morse to give an overall project update.
Morse spoke of a site visit by Linda Harris and Gwen McLin of the Board of Regents who attended the August 28th Faculty Development and Survey Course meetings. Harris is in charge of the five distance learning demonstration projects and McLin is a Regent. Morse said the special guests emphasized the fact that the projects are "demonstration" and hoped the projects would share information. She said the instructional technologists are being hired and that Bill Patterson plans to get together with them very soon. The Survey Course is now in production and is on schedule.
Morse passed out Central Florida Community Colleges' newsletter. She described CFCC's successful efforts to institutionalize their distance learning activities. Morse also said she was writing a proposal for an additional grant pertaining to learner support.
Donna Castellano said she experienced success at Valencia by having a credible person make contact with faculty for encouraging the use of technology. At VCC they have a Faculty Academy where faculty do get release time and get paid for professional development opportunities. She said it was critical to reassure faculty that they will be required to do a distance learning class. Faculty wanted a support person there at class with them, not only at the receive site. The technology has demonstrated the requirement for have contingencies when it doesn't work.
Lytle passed out copies of the surveys from the colleges for the members to review. Two additional columns were required to be added, one for FAX and one for VIDEO. Brevard Community College uses their broadcasts to pass on information about registration, class availability etc. Specific recommendations were made concerning wording changes for the survey instrument. Lytle recorded these changes on his master copy, and the new survey will be distributed to all committee members in one week.
Fleming said CFCC provides orientation through a for-credit class. The class must be taken in the first semester and it is graded pass/fail. One of the assignments requires research so students must demonstrate their ability to use the library facilities. Daytona Beach requires students taking telecourses to attend a mandatory orientation to make contact with the instructor and receive their syllabus. Valencia requires all students to attend orientation and has a separate 3-credit hour success class which has been considered for becoming mandatory for all students. Spaulding said future USF students who attend Hillsborough Community College receive their orientation, registration, and counseling for USF there at Hillsborough. He would like to see the same service available between UCF and all the Consortium's community colleges.
Concerning the catalog, BCC has their's on the World Wide Web. CFCC prints their catalog every two years and posts updates on the Web.
Financial Aid has a federal stipulation, requiring students who receive student loans to come to campus and watch a video. Also students at DBCC must come in for counselors to make professional judgements in those cases where dramatic changes have occurred in their incomes. At BCC, the Cocoa campus has an arrangement with the credit union so that students can fill out a form, scan it and submit it through a closed-circuit network. Counselors can be spoken with through CUSeeMe computer technology. BCC plans to use the Web and 28.8 modems to expand this service.
Concerning the library, the community colleges are now networked on LINK. Public libraries are planning to connect through a network called LION. Castellano said the CCLA-Community College Library Automation is moving toward reciprocal checkout, where anyone could request books by any library and people can pick the information at their local library.
Concerning counseling and advising, VCC has a 1-800-number which provides referrals to services for students for up to ten sessions of all different types. VCC has these stations all over the county which serve students as one stop shopping for services. Rusty said UCF has a similar service called EAP (Employee Assistance Program).
Concerning transient students, in 1997 the State of Florida will use a common form among the 28 community colleges for accessing student info.
Concerning tutoring, at BCC on the video or broadcast, the instructor asks students to call him/her for a class list with "ringers", those students who have the best grades. It was suggested that instructors should put their e-mail addresses on the syllabus. At CFCC, they figured out how to increase the voice mail message limit form 10 to 25 messages.
Concerning testing, the security of testing is an issue in distance learning. Knowing who is doing the work is speculative. It was suggested that the Online University of Phoenix and other institutions be contacted to see how they handle testing.
The suggestion was made for committee members to make contact with others in state agencies to brainstorm. This may be helpful for the all-day conference planned on learner support. Fleming commented on the survey that anecdotal information would be helpful.
Lytle said that agenda item 5, a survey for students would be addressed in the next meeting. Members are requested to return the new survey version (2.0) by the next meeting. The next meeting will be on Friday, October 27th at 9:30 am in room 100 of the UCF Research Pavillion.