ASCRC Minutes 9/20/05

Members Present: J. Campana, S. Derry, J. Eglin, V. Hedquist, C. Henderson, C. Johnston, J. Luckowski, D. McCormick, D. Potts, M. Roscoe, H. Thompson, A. Szalda-Petree R. Welsh

Members Absent/Excused: V.Pavlish

Ex-Officio Present: L. Carlyon, A.Walker-Andrews, Melanie Hoell

Guest: Educational Outreach Director Sandy Willcox, Internship Services Director Terry Berkhouse

Chair Luckowski called the meeting to order at 2:10p.m.

The minutes from 9/6/05 were amended and approved after the guest’s presentations.

Old Business:

Oversight of Internet courses offered through Continuing Education

Sandy Willcox, Director, Educational Outreach, Continuing Education provided an overview of the levels of oversight involved with online courses. She provided several handouts. There is a form for course development and a form for course delivery. The request for development funds requires signatures of the instructor, department chair academic dean and dean of Continuing Education. The course delivery form requires the same approval process, and the graduate dean for graduate level courses, and requires a syllabus, the instructor’s curriculum vitae, and the delivery method.

Once a course is in Banner, it rolls forward for the next year. Continuing Education then contacts the instructor to inquire whether the course will be taught again; if so a course delivery form must be processed. An instructor may request to teach a course for a maximum of 4 times on each course proposal. This would include winter session and is very rare.

It is rare that an instructor on a developed course changes. When this has happened the department has been fully aware of the situation.

There are several checks and balances in place to maintain the integrity of the course. One exists in the documentation required for payroll. Another is that Blackboard is password protected. The instructor has to have the approval or they are not provided a password.

Continuing Education provides assistance for 100 courses and 550 course supplements so they stay very busy.

It was asked who owns the course. Because the faculty member has been compensated to develop the course, the University owns the course in accordance with section 14.100 and 14.260 of the CBA. However faculty members can negotiate an agreement working with University legal counsel that addresses their specific concerns. Copyright supersedes method. Willcox is not an expert on these matters and will defer to legal counsel on the specifics of the laws.

There are still a few courses remaining on E-college, the previous electronic course delivery system, the rest are on Blackboard. Development funds are provided only to courses developed on Blackboard.

Several additional questions were addressed. The University pays a licensing fee to Blackboard that has increased due to various upgrades to serve more students and the satellite campuses. The Blackboard Community System with expanded capabilities has a fee of $60,000 a year. It is estimated this cost will increase to $100,000 a year in 2007. The standard payment for course development is $1000 per credit and the delivery salary is 3,500 extra to load for a full course which is approximately 15-16 students. The Provost has identified future goals of more online general education courses and a complete online undergraduate degree. Components that need to be face to face will be. Instructors have the option to require exams to be proctored.

The online course inventory lists all the courses offered as well as discontinued courses. Some courses offered online do not work and are never offered again. The program is in its infancy. Continuing Education will be bringing outside experts to provide seminars focusing on best practices in online teaching, assessment and administration.

Continuing Education manages the delivery system and leaves the curriculum standards and integrity up to the departments. The intangibles of a college education that are missing from online courses and workload issues are topics for ASCRC to discuss.

• Cooperative Education Internships

Terry Berkhouse, Director of Internship Services provided an overview of the services provided by the office. Internship Services is strictly a facilitator and offer services to students, faculty, and employers. They assist students in finding internships, Employers in finding interns, mediate problems between employers and interns, and maintain records. Faculty make all the decisions with regard to whether the internship will be for credit or grade and what is required to earn a letter grade. The number of credits is up to the academic department. Usually 45-60 work hours are equivalent to 1 credit and 65% of internships require a composition assignment. Internship Services provides evaluation materials to faculty but have no role in grading decisions.

Students are required to fill out a Learning Agreement that requires signatures of the student, faculty internship advisor, work supervisor, and internship services personnel. The learning agreement identifies the number of credits and whether the internship is taken for letter or credit. There is also a section for evaluation of learning objectives-reports/projects/other at the end-of-term, weekly, or monthly.

There are two evaluations required: the student’s evaluation of the internship experience and the supervisor’s evaluation of the intern. The faculty internship advisors uses these evaluations and any academic work assignments, journals, projects completed for the employer, and reports on the internship experience to assign credit or letter grade.

Not all departments coordinate internships through Internship Services. Theoretically all X98 Cooperative Education Internship courses should be run through Internship Services, X90 Supervised Internships often are handled by departments. The School of Education, Pharmacy, Law, and Sociology coordinate there own internships.

Several reports were distributed documenting the total number of interns from FY2003 through 2005 and then broken down by department. The majority of students are placed in Missoula as represented in the chart of placements by geographic area. There was a report showing the number of internships and the average total credits. Less than 1% of the students are taking 4 to 6 internships. There currently is no university limit on internships. Individual departments may have internal limits. There were 48 students that took 3 internships ranging between 6 and 19 total credits, the average was 12. The office will now be flagging students at three internships. One student had 5 internships all in EVST and another had 6 internships from 5 different departments. One student had 25 internship credits all in Political Science.

Employers are screened via conversations with the internship coordinator. If the employer is not well known, the internship coordinator may check with the Chamber of Commerce or other community organizations. Occasionally the Internship Office will work with University Legal Council regarding sensitive matters related to the work environment.

• The Social Science subcommittee reviewed the additional justification and detailed syllabi for GEOG 201 and 214 and recommends the courses retain the social science designation. The committee concurred.
  
  
• The Undergraduate Advising Center (formally University College) submitted a form to delete UNC 295, 298, 398, 495, 496, and 498 from the catalog. UNC 380 FIG Leader Training Seminar, 2cr will be retained for the time being. Most of the training is now handled through stipends, but occasionally the course is needed.

• Chair elect Johnston proposed a solution to the Graduation Appeals Committee membership issue. He suggests that an additional faculty member be added, but that the chair is a non-voting member. This will assure experience and continuity on the committee. The details will be discussed next week.

New Business:

• The committee approved November 15th as the deadline for departments to submit general education review forms and syllabi for review of Ethics and Science courses. The courses will be reviewed by the existing Ethics and Science subcommittees.

Committee Reports:

• Professor Eglin, the General Education committee liaison reported that the General Education Committee has a goal to bring several models to the October Faculty Senate meeting. Celia Winkler from Sociology was selected as Chair and Steven Gaskill from HHP was selected as chair-elect. It seems the problem with the General Education program is an issue of implementation rather than structure. The criteria will need to be strengthened and courses must be scrutinized to make sure students are gaining the foundational knowledge necessary to move on to upper-division courses in their major.

• The Writing Committee chair asked ASCRC to approve the addition of the new Composition Director, Kate Ryan to the committee as an ex-officio member. The committee concurred. Professor Campana would also like to be on the committee. However, there is a member from English on the committee, and two members from English would unbalance the committee structure which has a rep from each of the major discipline areas plus a member from English. The Writing Committee meetings are open so Professor Campana is welcome to join the meeting and provide input.

Next week the committee will discuss the oversight issues related to internet courses and cooperative education internships

The meeting was adjourned at 3:50 PM.