Technology Everywhere

June
1999
Chair

Thanks to the fine work of the Technology Committee, the Academic Senate Office Staff, and many other committee colleagues, technology was everywhere at the 1999 Spring Session.

The most unusual and exciting event was the lunchtime general session that featured Secretary of Education, Gary Hart speaking to us by videoconference link and then engaging in a question and answer period. This proved to be an effective way of asking very specific questions of someone who would not normally attend the conference in person. Thanks are due to Pacific Bell for facilitating the event and to Jackie Siminitus, Linda Uhrenholt and Gary Fuson for making it all happen. The really exciting part, that was not apparent to delegates, was unexpected difficulty in maintaining the video link until just ten minutes before lunch.

This same videoconference setup permitted two additional breakout sessions in the ballroom. In the first session, Pacific Bell Education Advocate, Linda Uhrenholt, visited a variety of resource locations to show how educators could incorporate them in their classroom instruction. In the second session, Linda joined with Ann Koda of the @ONE Project to visit several community college sites that are actively using videoconferencing.

Technology was also the focus of several regular breakout sessions. Ian Walton, and Kathy O'Connor of the Technology Committee along with Beverly Shue of the Curriculum Committee guided participants through new advice to Curriculum Committees on the implementation of the changed Title 5 Regulations regarding instructor-student contact. At the Saturday session, delegates adopted the position paper "Guidelines for Good Practice: Effective Instructor-Student Contact in Distance Learning."

Dennis Smith and Deborah Ludford led a discussion of joint senate/union issues in distance education and considered how to deal with many of the hot issues in technology by using both senate policies and collective bargaining contracts.

In an Educational Policies Committee breakout, Hoke Simpson, Elton Hall and Ian Walton presented a draft of the upcoming paper on "Academic Freedom, Privacy, Copyright and Fair Use in a Technological World." This area features a large, constantly changing set of issues that involve both senate and union perspectives. Attendees provided feedback on what they would like included in the paper.

Ric Matthews, San Diego Miramar College, presented an update on the current state of technology planning at the Chancellor's Office, including Technology II, Telecommunications Technology Infrastructure Program (TTIP) and Distance Education Technical Advisory Committee (DETAC), and provided a forum for faculty input to these ongoing planning efforts.

And of course, there was the now traditional selection of breakouts in the Technology Room:

Ann Koda, Catherine Ayers and Dan Mitchell from De Anza College described the current status of the @ONE faculty training project and showed material from two of the modules that they have recently developed: using E-mail and using websites to support instruction.

Kathy O'Connor and Susan Sargent of Santa Barbara City College demonstrated the material being developed by the Online Curriculum Resource Center project which will make curriculum and course development materials available statewide.

Marsha Chan of Mission College shared both her successes and tribulations in teaching ESL as an online course, and discussed the different ways technology can be used to enhance communication with students.

Jim Petromelli demonstrated materials developed by the San Mateo Community College District Center for Teaching and Learning and discussed the approach that they have taken to faculty training and development of web-based instructional materials.

Finally the technology room facilitated a session on web advising by the Counseling and Library Faculty Issues Committee.