Online Faculty Advisory Committee Sept 2015 Minutes

by

Online Faculty Advisory Committee Minutes
September 28, 2015

Attendees:

Online Faculty Committee Members
(If you a member of the Lesley community, for a complete list, please email: heather dot webb@lesley dot edu for the membership list.)

The objective of the inaugural meeting for the year was to identify which issues the committee should address over the course of the year:

1) Monitoring of resources against new online enrollments
Summary: As enrollments grow, understanding the desired distribution of core versus adjunct faculty teaching online and allocation of teaching resources across face-to-face, blended and online assignments is critical.

Next Steps:
·      Provost Office is working on producing metrics that will describe how resources should be reinvested in faculty as enrollments in programs grow for presentation at a future OFAC meeting.

2) Communication and relationship between academic advisors/success coaches & instructional faculty
Summary:
It is not always clear when there is an issue with a student what the communication protocol should be or how to contact the success coach.

Next Steps:
·      Updated Standard Operating Procedures for Communication with Success Coaches will be circulated to the OFAC committee and webinar with success coaches will be scheduled to review the communication protocols.
·      Communication to all teaching faculty for FA2 will come from Associate Provost (elearning & Academic Technology) that outlines how faculty can identify their students advising information in LOIS and other helpful administrative tips.

3) Use of faculty advisor/mentor assigned to individual students
Summary: The term faculty mentor is used differently at different schools. At the graduate school, it has meant a mentor to other faculty. There is interest in ensuring all students are assigned both a faculty advisor/mentor as well as academic advisor/success coach.

Next Steps:
·      Work with CLAS Human Services program as pilot to identify process for adding faculty mentor/advisor to students (through collaboration with Advising Center) and to create reports that appropriately advise Program Director and Faculty Advisor/Mentor of the advisees for the program.
·      Work with GSOE Ed Tech program as a pilot to identify process for adding faculty mentor/advisor to students (through collaboration with Associate Dean) and to create reports that appropriately advise Program Director and Faculty Advisor/Mentor of the advisees for the program.

4)  Expanding the learning resources for online orientation to other populations
Summary:
An Online Orientation is provided to all new online students. There may be interest in expanding this orientation for other populations.

Next Steps:
·      Review the online orientation at the next OFAC meeting to examine the existing materials, identify opportunities for additional information, and recommendations for other uses of the materials.

Next meeting: November 2015

 

FERPA Compliance

by

The following are observations and recommendations from Lesley’s General Counsel that faculty and staff should follow to remain in compliance with FERPA:

  1. The FERPA rules and guidelines prohibit universities from disclosing student education records like grades and evaluative comments to third parties without a student’s permission.
  2. Some email systems are vulnerable to interception.
  3. Because communications between faculty and students posted on the Blackboard learning management system remain with the Blackboard system, these communications are much more secure than non-Lesley email systems, and are somewhat more secure than the Lesley email system.
  4. Faculty are encouraged to use Blackboard Grade Center to post grades and evaluative comments:
    • This is the better practice, and should be particularly observed with respect to transmitting grades.
    • Posting feedback and grades to Blackboard Grade Center ensures that only the intended student can access his or her grades and evaluations within a secure Internet connection.
    • Blackboard does have a feature that permits annotations of written work.
  5. In the meantime, for those who are more comfortable using email messages to communicate evaluative comments to students:
    • Those email messages should be sent to and from lesley.edu addresses only.
    • If a student sends you a paper from a non-lesley.edu account, you should respond by using the student’s lesley.edu address only.
    • You should not forward emails from lesley.edu to your personal email accounts if the email messages contain personally identifiable information or student records.
    • If you have reason to believe that someone other than your student has access to your student’s email account, do not send anything to that email address
    • Do not allow anyone else to have access to your lesley.edu email account.
  6. GoogleDocs and other services are not secure, are not subject to contracts with the university, and we should not put student information on those sites or services (the attached FAQ addresses a few questions related to this).  Note also that anything placed on GoogleDocs and other services may be “data mined” by Google or the service company.

More information is available in this FERPA Questions and Answers March 2015

 

New Online Programs

by

Several new online programs have been approved by their school’s respective curriculum committee and the Provost’s office.

The following new online programs will be ready to launch in January 2015.

These include three new specializations in the undergraduate Business curriculum:

  • Accounting
  • Marketing, and
  • Non-Profit Management

As well as a new online Advanced Professional Certificate program in Literacy in the K–8 Classroom:

  • APC in in Literacy in the K–8 Classroom