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Has there been conversation about whether it’s a wise move to go fully online for STEM disciplines like chemistry? Is it the best for students?
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Bychinya_russell
Only courses currently offered online at one or more colleges and/or CCCOnline are being moved to Colorado Online during the initial transition. State discipline faculty can have conversations around what could be in the online space and what should be there. We need to be scientists ourselves, testing our assumptions and making data-informed decisions.
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Instructor Resources
- Can I use/get a CCCOnline course for my course section?
- Can the CCCS LD team help build my class?
- Can we use other materials that are OER if we still use the course materials approved?
- Do we have a way to tell what school a student on our pooled-course roster is coming from?
- Do we prioritize placing students from our home college in the sections we teach?
- Does my pooled section course have meeting times?
- For pooled sections: When do the students have access to D2L course shells?
- How can I learn more about the required Course Materials for pooled sections, the submission process for them, etc.?
- How do I copy teaching resources/ready-to-teach courses into my course shell?
- How do I create a sandbox if I need one?
- How do I know who the state discipline chair for the subject I teach is?
- How should I release grade information about my own students to student services of different colleges?
- I keep seeing ‘Not Authorized’ when trying to register for and access resources. What can I do if I have issues enrolling in these PD courses?
- If I am not teaching a pooled section, do I have to use the required course materials?
- If the textbook is an e-textbook, what is the cost for students?
- Other than the Tutor Me assistance, can students use tutoring and writing assistance programs at their home campuses for these classes?
- What can we do if the required OER is not the best?
- What is an Online Success Liaison? What do they do?
- What is the procedure to set up my course shell? Generally prepping my semester courses, I go to Course Administration, click “Import/Export/Copy Components” and copy what I wish from a previous course, searching for that specific course. Will it be that straightforward for this, or a bit more complicated?
- What is the timeline of assigning and releasing pooled sections?
- What’s happening with the CCCS Online Library? Has my college library gone away?
- When the blank D2L shell is created for every pooled section, does it automatically have the common course framework built in? Or do instructors have to copy that in?
- When will we know if the class has enough enrollment to run? What is that number?
- Where can I find help resources for D2L?
- Where can I find the required course materials and teaching resources for pooled sections?
- Where can I sign up for self-access PD courses?
- Where is the TutorMe information located? Is it already in our D2L shells or is it something that we add to our course shells ourselves?
- Will we receive a completion certificate for this training? Or can we request one?
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Spring Break
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Student Services
- From the student perspective, how will they know what books, etc. are needed for their online section from another school?
- Is there going to be a move toward centralizing and standardizing services, such as tutoring, or a phasing out of centralized option to favor the localized tutoring services for students?
- What is an Online Success Liaison? What do they do?
- Will CCCOnline courses have some designation of their home school?
- Will the management of transcript sharing across all thirteen colleges be led by CCCS or something all colleges will need to hire for?
- Will this system provide or improve assistance with tracking down students who disappear from classes?
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Academic Affairs
- Are ALO's from institutions on the subcommittee?
- Can colleges override the default prerequisites?
- Can you explain how academic concerns will be managed with this new model?
- Currently, I don't believe the individual colleges can view students who are not from the institution (in Banner). If the consortia section is assigned to an individual institution, will we be able to see all students who register for the course, even if they're not from our institution?
- Do the chairs of each department then communicate with the system office with how many sections we can provide?
- How can my discipline get started developing online courses?
- How do we explain this to HLC?
- How does registration work for these courses? How will drop for no-show work? How will the differing semester starts be handled to not confuse students?
- How will academic freedom be addressed?
- If a student's home school offers the course online - will students have the choice to take a course at another institution or only if the course is not offered at the home institution?
- Who will be responsible for reporting course outcomes and administering course evaluations for the consortia courses?
- Will (CTE) credentials - specifically vocational ones issued by CCCOnline - be honored at the other colleges?
- Will all online courses in a discipline be taught through one college?
- Will faculty have to choose between teaching all online or all on-campus courses?
- Will this also apply to pre-college level courses?
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Learning Resources
- Are ALO's from institutions on the subcommittee?
- From the student perspective, how will they know what books, etc. needed for their online section from another school?
- What are you thinking for required course material? Will there be a common textbook for all ENG121 across the system? Are we pushing OER? Or will that still be left to the individual colleges?
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Technology
- Articles coming soon
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Learning Design
- ADA compliant or WCAG compliant?
- Can faculty add modules in content, like OER materials, etc.? This would be for a fully online situation. I'm wondering about how much flexibility faculty/instructors will have?
- Can we create widgets? I can't right now? / We can't have widget that go to our outside software? / We can't have a different homepage then?
- Could each college add resources under the resource tab/
- For instructors who teach at multiple colleges: Are they able to copy their own courses from one college to another?
- Has consideration been given to QM Certified courses? If these are modified, they will lose that certification.
- How can my discipline get started developing online courses?
- How was this framework design decided? Was student feedback taken into account?
- What considerations will be made to assure accessibility for courses that are fully customized/designed by a college adjunct/instructor?
- What happens to educational freedom when all online classes are prescribed as Ready-to-Teach classes?
- Where will external tool widgets like McGraw Hill be located?
- Which tools populate the info in the "work" widget on the course homepage? Does that include all tasks, including discussions, assignments, and quizzes?
- Will instructors be able to customize their gradebook view?
- Will instructors be able to remove tools they don't use in specific classes? (e.g. discussion in an in-person section)
- Will instructors create their own course syllabus?
- Will students be able to select OER sections specifically for consortial sections as well?
- Will students have the discretion to be able to see the instructor and course materials for the home college section?
- Will there be a course home page?
- You've emphasized that the structure rather than the content of our class is being determined at the system level, however, I have seen a draft of a "Healthy Course Checklist" and supplemental checklists that appear to create CCCS level control of many aspects of content including textbooks, assessment used, language used, etc. within online classes. How exactly are these checklists going to be used?
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Employment Related Questions
- Can one instructor teach for multiple colleges? For example, an instructor is from Otero and there is an opportunity to teach a BIO course for PCC and Chemistry for Lamar. Is that possible?
- Can the chairs (or whoever does this) reach out to other colleges for new online instructors instead of relinquishing online courses?
- Could we consider a model for faculty such as EdVisions in MN, which was supported by Gates and Hewlett Foundations?
- Does it look like CCCOnline instructors who get hired by one of the colleges will be required to teach face-to-face courses as well as online?
- How to get information to the home colleges for instructors who are highly experienced in online realm rather than instructors having to watch the job boards as another job in the meantime?
- I am currently at the top tier for compensation at CCCOnline. Will I have to start over at the lowest tier when I begin teaching at another college in the CCCS system?
- I teach a course that has around 4 sections... In looking at my enrollment data, there are usually not enough students from any college to justify hiring an instructor for a section here. Where will I fit in under the new model?
- If current CCCOnline instructors transition to one of the home colleges, will the instructor be able to maintain remote privileges?
- Is there any new information regarding CCCOnline instructors who teach only for CCCOnline, and what they will need to do in order to continue teaching exclusively online?
- Regarding CCCOnline instructors who are not affiliated with any of the colleges: after all instruction shifts to the colleges, will it be necessary for these instructors to apply for teaching positions at one of the colleges and go through an interview and hiring process? Like a new instructor?
- What does this mean for current CCCOnline instructors?
- Wondering if you have insight to a question about hours for the Colorado Online initiative. Adjuncts are asking how moving the online classes under institutions will affect their course load. Currently, adjuncts can teach up to 21 credit hours across all institution with smaller caps at each institution. Theoretically, if an adjunct is teaching a full load (12 credit hours) at CCA and say 6 credit hours online for CCCOnline, once those online classes move to CCA, will the instructional cap go up, will adjuncts have less classes accessible to teach at same time, or is there another way of approaching adjunct course load under the merging of online and instructional offerings?
- Would the maximum credit limit for adjuncts still apply?
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CO@ Info Series Episode 1: Ready-to-Teach Courses
- Are course materials for pooled courses going to be vetted to ensure they're fully accessible for all students, including neurodiverse students (i.e. ensuring they're compatible with text-to-speech, screen readers, etc.)?
- Are we talking specifically about courses that were previously offered on CCCOnline or are we talking about courses that were offered online, regardless of CCCOnline or college online? Do they all fall under the CO@ umbrella?
- Can we more clearly define what we mean by Course Materials? Does this requirement only apply to materials that have costs? Course materials that are selected through the RTT process will be vetted for Colorado Online @ standards, which include accessibility, etc.
- Common materials - doesn't that mean common activities - assessment etc. - so it is basically everything?
- Do I understand correctly that College X may have 3 online sections of MAT 1340 that are "local" and maybe 1-2 sections pooled? In that case, our choice is either to teach with two different sets of materials or move "our" online classes to the common materials. Also who will adopt textbooks?
- Does using common course materials mean using a common course shell? This has been a point of confusion.
- Does using common course materials mean using a common course shell? This has been a point of confusion.
- For course section allocation, is the historical enrollment based on the previous year or several years? Since preliminary recommendations are being made for SP24, will adjustments be made after census for all parts of term of the SP23 semester?
- For lab science courses, in which different contact hours are used at different schools, are the RtT classes using the larger or smaller number of contact hours as they as being developed? (e.g., 1:2 vs 1:3 ratio for the lab part of classes)
- Has there been conversation about whether it's a wise move to go fully online for STEM disciplines like chemistry? Is it the best for students?
- How likely is it that an instructor that teaches a home section and a pooled section will be required to teach from two different shells and/or materials?
- How will student evaluation of courses work in pooled section?
- If an instructor has built an OER and they get a pooled course, can they say "take the textbook back"? Or are they going to have to use the Ready-to-Teach course materials?
- Is it CCCS long term goal for both in-person and online courses to have the same textbook and materials across the colleges?
- Is the goal to develop OERs for the pooled sections?
- Question regarding the 25 students - does it mean there are typically 25 students who take a CCCOnline class?
- Ready-to-Teach (RtT) course shells - do they have to be used for the pooled section?
- So the course materials will not include instructor materials?
- So, for the pooled sections, the materials, whether textbooks or OERs, have to be decided by the discipline and cannot be changed by the instructor, right?
- So, if a college offers more than one section of an online course - typically - then all those courses are listed first before the pooled sections?
- There was a question during the first week of Learning Design Academy about whether instructors would be allowed to substitute OER textbooks, since they don't have a cost. Any news on that?
- What about courses that follow a sequence, link Calculus 1, 2, and 3? Those textbooks need to be the same. How will that be determined?
- What happens when a home college section moves to a pooled section due to low enrollment?
- What if a student begins French 1 but is placed in a pooled section that uses a specific textbook. For French 2, (s)he is then able to take the course at their home college that uses different course materials. Will (s)he then need to purchase a new textbook that may have a different sequence in content covered?
- When there is a home college course and a CCCOnline course, should the school be scheduling two sections, one that's already offered by the school and one that's appointed from the consortial model?
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CO@ Info Series Episode 2: Financial Model
- After taking out the 12% for centralized services support and the 4.2% for the pooled incentive pot, the colleges are getting around 85.5% revenue? (See slide 5)
- Are we not running classes if they're less than 25 or are we going to adjust the model as we see student registration behavior?
- Do colleges get to keep the direct instructor cost (see slide 6).
- For the pooled section, where it says 41.5% goes to the teaching colleges, will 12% of that go to central services (see slide 5)
- From the student perspective, are they paying their home tuition or are they paying for consortia services as well?
- Have the CFOs or system done an analysis of how this model would have impacted revenue in the past year? I know this will take some assumptions, but do we know whether the colleges will have increased or decrease revenue from their online enrollment?
- How does Red Rocks go from an average of 15 RRCC students enrolled to an average of 25 students enrolled? (slide 6)
- How does the new model mean there's suddenly an additional 10 students available to enroll? Where are the additional students in one section and now we're merging two sections into one to make up the new average?
- If there aren't enough students for all of the pooled sections planned, which get cut first? Wild cards?
- Slide 6 seems to suggest that the new model will get 10 more students to enroll. What if 25 RRCC students do not enroll. Does the revenue go to $0?
- This model appears to be based on course currently taught at colleges and CCCOnline. Will the same model be applied to course that are currently only taught at colleges, but not on CCCOnline?
- What areas of Student Services do you envision being centralized?
- What happens with a student in a teaching section who uses resources outside of their home college? How are those costs calculated and accounted for?
- Whose tuition do students pay? Home college or CO? Is there a set tuition so each student is paying equally?
- Won't there be indirect costs for colleges not teaching but have students in pooled sections because of local student support?
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CO@ Info Series Episode 3: Course Caps
- Articles coming soon
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CO@ Info Series Episode 4: Common Course Materials
- Articles coming soon
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Others/General
- Has anyone talked with another institution that have completed a similar transition? i.e., Florida Online
- It sounds like a subcommittee that represents just the small and rural schools needs to be established if it does not already exist.
- Landon, what are you most excited about related to this effort? Also, what's your biggest fear/concern related to it?
- With the now 3 way split of revenues - how much are tuition/fees expected to increase and how does that new price compare to other online competitors in the state (4 year schools) and across the country?