The Academic Senate for California Community
Colleges (ASCCC) has been following the discussions
on the CIAC list serve regarding the concerns
of UC Berkeley anthropology department faculty
about online anthropology courses. Some of the
email messages that have been sent about this
topic appear based on misunderstandings of our
legal requirements and the internal processes
we have in place to respond to them. Therefore,
at the direction of the Executive Committee of
the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges,
I am writing as Curriculum Chair for ASCCC. We
have several points we'd like to make clear.
A. Our segments have time-honored, agreed-upon
methods for articulating courses. As you know,
community colleges have official course outlines
of record, (required by law). These are the basis
of all articulation agreements, not individual
syllabi, nor section-by-section reviews. On behalf
of our community college faculty, we are confident
that our system's articulation officers are continuing
to use the course outline as the sole basis for
articulation.
B. Community college courses delivered via distance
or through any technological mediation are courses
that must conform to the articulated course outline;
they are merely courses delivered in a different
mode and are identical in content, objectives
and outcomes to courses offered in another mode,
(e.g., a smaller traditional classroom of 45 community
college students or a large lecture of several
hundred UC or CSU students). In addition, our
faculty evaluation processes, per ed. code, include
assessing the instructor's adherence to the official
course outline.
C. Curriculum committees at each college are
required by Title 5 to conduct a separate review
for any course that is to be offered via distance--not
because of concerns about rigor but because of
concerns about effective faculty-student contact
and to ensure that these alternative modes conform
to the course outline. Below is an excerpt from
the Academic Senate 1999 paper, Guidelines for
Good Practice: Effective Instructor-Student Contact
in Distance Learning, available on the Academic
Senate website: http://www.asccc.org.
As the document underscores, in conducting this
separate review, the local senate's curriculum
committee must
1) ensure that the local Curriculum Committee
performs a separate review of courses offered
by distance education, as required by Title 5
'55378.
2) ensure that this separate review considers
both the information transfer and the instructor-student
contact aspects of the course,
3) ensure that this separate review of instructor-student
contact addresses the methods to be used, their
effectiveness, and their frequency,
4) ensure that this separate review considers
the availability of technical support for faculty
and students,
5) ensure that this separate review considers
issues of access for students with disabilities,
6) ensure that adequate support services are
provided to distance education students, by consulting
with counseling and library faculty, and
7) consult with local bargaining agents on distance
education issues that involve working conditions.
As faculty in our public sectors of higher education
attempt to address the demands of increasing numbers
of students at our doors in these tight fiscal
times, and as we consider legislators' interests
in finding alternative methods of instructional
delivery, it is incumbent upon faculty to work
intersegmentally to resolve emerging concerns.
The Intersegmental Committee of Academic Senates
(ICAS) will be asked to consider this particular
instance. Faculty are currently meeting through
the IMPAC project (http://www.cal-impac.org)
to identify students' curricular preparation for
transfer. Discussions about major preparation
rightfully belong in that arena, and we encourage
faculty--in anthropology and any other field--to
participate in these faculty-to-faculty dialogues
at the regional and state-wide IMPAC meetings.
We encourage all faculty and the articulation
officers who assist them to work within our agreed-upon
processes and where necessary, recommend appropriate
changes through ICAS or its sponsored projects.
