Technology

Whereas, Resolution 11.01 S16 directed the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges to “in order to provide guidance to local senates and colleges on best practices in online education programs, update the 2008 paper Ensuring the Appropriate Use of Educational Technology: An Update for Local Academic Senates”;

Resolved, That the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges adopt the paper Ensuring Effective Online Education Programs: A Faculty Perspective [1] and disseminate to local senates and curriculum committees upon its adoption.

MSC

Whereas, The Educational Planning Initiative (EPI) has as its primary goal the development of a student services portal that will customize and sequence matriculation information and activities to lead students toward successful completion of their goals and an Education Planning and Degree Audit System to provide transcript, articulation, and curriculum inventory elements to colleges in order to help counselors reach more students;

Whereas, The 2013-2014 Budget Act enacted the governor’s Online Education Initiative to expand access to online education in the California Community College System and allocated $16.9 million for that purpose, and furthermore the Chancellor’s Office established the California Community College Online Education Initiative (OEI) to realize this legislation through the creation of the OEI Online Course Exchange;

Whereas, Resolution 12.04 F14 “Using Anticipated Savings from Adopting the Common Course Management System to Support Online Faculty Professional Development Needs” urged “local senates and bargaining units to work with their administrations to ensure monetary savings from a district or college transitioning to a Common Course Management System (CCMS) be used primarily to support the professional development needs of distance education faculty making the transition to the new CCMS;”

Whereas, The creation of educational programs, including professional development, technology, and curriculum standards, is an area of faculty primacy regardless of modality, and an increasing number of colleges are creating or expanding online programs in response to student interest in online courses, degrees, and certificates;

Whereas, Each of the current technology initiatives (Common Assessment, Educational Planning, and Online Education) may require the development of a database that tracks student information on the basis of a random student identifier; and

Whereas, The cost of developing discrete databases using discrete student identifiers would exceed that of developing a single database with a federated student identifier capable of supporting current and future technology and other initiatives;

Whereas, The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges strongly supports and continues to engage in a multitude of student success efforts and initiatives;

Whereas, Research has shown that access to and use of textbooks and ancillary materials are correlated with successful course completion by students, and students postpone or fail to purchase textbooks due to escalating textbook prices and other educational costs, which could impact their success and course completion;

Whereas, Distance education has continued to expand throughout California and the nation, and California community colleges offer a wide array of distance education courses and programs;

Whereas, Publishers and others are providing a wide range of for-profit resources to faculty, many of which may not be based on sound pedagogical research or effective practices in online teaching; and

Whereas, In the intervening years since 1995 there have been many changes to the Title 5 Regulations regarding the development and delivery of courses using educational technologies for both face-to-face and distance education;

Whereas, In the intervening years since 1995 there have been many changes in educational technologies and the implementation of said technologies within education; and

Whereas, Draft recommendation (as of September 30, 2011) 2.2 of the California Community Colleges Task Force on Student Success (established in response to Senate Bill 1143, Liu, 2010) would “require students to participate in diagnostic assessment, orientation and the development of an education plan,” and recommendation 2.3 obligates colleges to “develop and use technology applications to better guide students in their educational process”;