Membership
| Mark Wilson '06, Chair Debbie Coehlo '06 Ron Stewart '07 Melora Halaj '07 Paul Primack Penny Diebel |
Botany & Plant Pathology Cascades Campus Information Services/Media Services SMILE International Programs Eastern Oregon University |
Ex-officio Members Vacant |
Budgets & Fiscal Planning Committee |
The Distance Education committee recognizes the contributions to the mission of the committee by Sarah Williams.
Distance Education Committee Standing Rules
The Distance Education Committee reviews and recommends policies on matters pertaining to distance education that promote the educational mission of the University. It provides policy recommendations regarding faculty relations as they pertain to the creation, implementation, delivery, rewards, and intellectual property rights related to distance education courses and programs. It advises in the long-term planning and financing of distance education courses and programs, including student marketing, recruitment and retention issues in order to ensure a sustainable student base. It advises on distance education curriculum priorities, development, standards and evaluation, and reviews certificate programs to insure high quality offerings. The Committee monitors standards of academic quality for all distance education courses to ensure the quality and uniformity of degree offerings. The Committee maintains a continuing examination of the impact of distance education on the educational mission of individual programs, departments, colleges and the University. It provides reports and recommendations to the Faculty Senate and operates in an advisory role to the Dean of Extended Campus.
The Committee consists of six Faculty, at least three of whom shall be from units or programs with existing or developing distance education courses, and two Students (preferably with distance education experience), one of whom shall be a graduate student, ideally to provide a broad representation of academic disciplines. In addition, ex-officio, non-voting members shall include one representative from each of the following: Budgets and Fiscal Planning Committee, Curriculum Council, Graduate Council, Valley Library, and the Dean of Extended Campus, or designee.
Activities for 2005-2006
At its first meeting, the Distance Education Committee selected tasks for the year from a list of high-priority projects developed in the previous year. The three tasks selected for 2005-2006 were continuing with “Insure that all distance education offerings are fully accessible,” “Addressing promotion and tenure issues,” and “Maintaining the educational quality of distance education.”
The Committee met four times. A fifth meeting was cancelled due to illness. Progress on the projects was also hindered by the transfer from OSU of some members, the inconsistent participation by others, and the technological difficulties of having three participants off campus.
Insure accessibility
The Information Technology accessibility program was presented to the Provost’s Council, which approved the guidelines and distributed them for implementation. This program contained guidelines dealing with distance education on which the DE Committee had input.
The committee had prepared plans to sponsor a competition to develop accessible courses in distance education, to bring a higher profile of course accessibility to campus. Because of personnel shifts within the IT Accessibility program and within the DE Committee, funding and energy for this competition dried up.
Addressing promotion and tenure issues
After many discussions and consultations, the DE Committee developed and approved a draft policy statement on P&T issues as they relate to distance education. The Committee presented the policy statement to the Faculty Senate Promotion and Tenure and Faculty Status committees.
The next step is to incorporate the comments of these committees into a revised policy statement and present it to the Faculty Senate Executive Committee. The DE Committee will also work with Ecampus and others in OSU administration to put together a multi-institutional peer review committee for online textbooks. For some faculty, a significant scholarly contribution is the preparation of an online textbook for distance courses. Without peer review, however, this scholarly work has low weight in promotion and tenure issues.
Maintaining the educational quality of distance education
Penny Diebel and others on the DE Committee interviewed individuals across campus to determine current approaches to the review and assessment of distance education courses. Penny also compiled several existing standards of educational quality. Several thorny issues arose in the interviews that both complicate review and assessment and suggest that a University-wide policy is needed.
Penny, with help from the rest of the Committee, prepared a draft policy statement on distance education course assessment and review. This statement addresses the frequency of peer teaching review, who has responsibility for review, the components of the review, and the role of student evaluations. She also compiled exemplar guidelines for peer review of distance courses, which we plan to make available during the policy approval process.
The next step is for the DE Committee to gather comments on its draft policy from shareholders across campus. The goal is to present a final policy statement to the Faculty Senate Executive Committee during the 06-07 year.
