Peer Evaluation for Faculty

Debbie, Sue and Julie have been planning for a change to the Faculty Evaluation process that came into effect this year. Instead of the usual "get the students to fill out an evaluation", the instructors who need to be evaluated are working in triads to give each other feedback on their teaching. All instructors involved in this process have to attend a mandatory 2 hour orientation, so this has kept all three of the curriculum consultants busy!

Academic Council

Sue and Julie (and Debbie before she left for holidays) have been very busy working with programs to complete all the necessary forms to go to Academic Council. Changes that need to be approved at Academic Council include new courses, credit changes, name changes, deleted courses, sequence changes . . . . And the meeting on Wednesday, November 17, was the deadline for all changes for the official LC calendar effective July 1, 2011. It was very busy!

Many of these changes have implications for our course development work, as it means that changes need to be made to the online and print courses prior to September 2011 delivery.

Access License - Copyright

As of December 31 we will no longer have an Access license at Lethbridge College. In the past we have been able to use third party materials (such as PDFs of articles) in our print based materials. Now we will have to apply to each specific publisher for copyright approval. There's a lot more to it than this so check out this website: http://www.lethbridgecollege.net/copyright/. This decision will impact all of us in various ways.

Diana and Mark worked extensively with Leah to develop the copyright website, which has been noticed nationally, by the way. Nice work on this!

What does this mean for EET?
- We're currently reviewing all the printed course manuals, and will be working with people from the programs to identify revisions and alternate materials.
- The instructional designers will be paying close attention to this as subject matter experts and course writers are identifying third party materials.

More on this as it evolves . . .

eLearning Cafe - Repurposing

We met with representatives from NAIT, Keyano, and Olds College (and with NorQuest College this afternoon) to discuss the best way to repurpose the eLearning Cafe website. There has been a lot of interest from the other eCampus institutions, which reinforces the quality of this site!

Mark and Tyler will be developing a "vanilla" version of the site. This means that we will be removing most references to Lethbridge College, changing the URL to a more generic one, and removing the references to the online tutoring, which only applies to Lethbridge College students for now.

Professional Development - Planning

Chris facilitated a discussion on Monday around the development of a PD plan to support the DL Strategy implementation. We have planned a variety of activities already, and this plan should help to pull everything together. More details on this as it progresses . . .

Upcoming Course Development Projects

We have been having conversations and doing some preliminary planning for the following projects. Some have started, while others are still in the preliminary stages:

• Revisions to Police Recruit Training materials. Pam and Erica are the leads on these revisions to the materials that were initially completed last February.
• Transition of the Practical Nursing (PN) program to online and blended delivery. This two year program consists of theory, lab, clinical, and practicum courses. All the theory courses will be developed for online delivery; the labs will be blended; and the clinical and practicum courses will be mostly face-to-face with an Angel presence. Pam has started work on this project and it is scheduled to be complete by the end of 2011.
  
• As part of the PN project, we need to develop 3 biology courses for online / blended delivery.
• I'm attending an meeting with the Engineering program next week to discuss their request to develop several of their first year core courses for online development. This is part of DL Strategy support.
• We've also had a very preliminary discussion around helping the Broadcast Journalism program develop a series of approximately courses in conjunction with the Alberta Weekly Newspapers Association (AWNA).
  
• The Early Childhood Program (ECE) has decided to move forward with transitioning their entire two year program from print to online delivery. Ian is meeting with the program soon to plan the development which will likely take 3 to 4 years.
  
• We may be supporting two additional wind turbine projects, but it is very preliminary.

I'll add more as they happen!

How do we know?

Interesting question . . . how do we know? How do we really know if . . . .

• the Read Me First section in our online courses is helpful for students?
  
• that the support we are providing for video conference or Smartboards is the best way?
  
• that the processes we use to do curriculum reviews with programs is working?
  
• that our Angel sessions with faculty are what they need?
  
• the Instructional Skills workshops or Survival Skills session are meeting instructors' needs
  
• that a learning object or activity in an online course helps students learn?

And the list goes on. What evidence could we gather to help us make decisions and to improve the support we provide?

The conference Chris G., Karen O'Dwyer and I attended the past few days in Banff was on the "Scholarship of Teaching and Learning". Here's one definition of this term from the workshop I attended on Wednesday: It "involves the gathering and interpretation of evidence of student learning" (Gale, 2008). The term applies most directly to what instructors are doing in their own classrooms, with a focus on understanding and improving student learning. But we support instructors, so where do we come in?

It's about following through on our curiosity . . . asking critical questions . . . gathering evidence . . . sharing what we have learned. It's also about helping instructors do this. If we have a culture of evidence in EET, it will most certainly come through in the work we do with instructors.

Watch for more presentations on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the next month of so. There's a lot more to it . . .

Next EET Staff Meeting - Focus on Productivity

It's time for another EET staff meeting. It's scheduled for Friday, November 19 at 9 am (location TBA), and the focus is on productivity.

Here's the agenda:

• First 10 minutes - questions comments about EET blog postings. Several more updates will be posted over the next week, and I'll remind you to read them before the meeting.
• Next 50 minutes - sharing practices that will help all of us be more productive. I'll be around asking for volunteers to share strategies that you use. I know that many of you have some good strategies you use on a regular basis. Either way, I'll be around recruiting . . .

If anyone has ideas for future meetings, let me know . . . Each meeting will have a theme that is relevant to everyone.

EET Meetings

As many of you know, through the fall I've been looking at all the meetings with EET and changing things up a bit in some situations. The purpose is to ensure that the meetings are planned, necessary, and purposeful. They also need to be as frequent as necessary with the right people at the table. Meetings suck up a lot of resources, so all of you at all levels should be thinking about the meetings you are involved with and asking yourselves questions like this:

• Is the meeting necessary? Do we need to meet more - or less - or not at all?
• Am I always prepared for meetings?
• Is there a planned agenda?
• What's the purpose for the meeting? Is it possible to provide information in different ways so that meetings may be unnecessary or shorter?
• And here is a link to more info on meetings (thanks Tyler!): http://the99percent.com/tips/5593/measure-meetings-with-action
  

The visual above shows the more structured meetings within EET. I've either asked - or will be asking - the people who chair these meetings to help to develop short terms of reference for each one.

Notes from EET / Chair meeting on October 25

Last week a group of us met with Chairs and Managers from across campus to share information on all the work that EET is involved with. One of my goals this year is to share more relevant and timely information on EET initiatives with the College community. These meetings with the Chairs will occur each semester from now on and are in addition to the Program Updates we are currently sending out each month.

Please take a few moments to skim / read through the notes from our meeting. This will give you a broader picture of EET initiatives than you might see in your day-to-day work. I think it will also provide some context for the additional information we are asking you to provide at all levels (for example, specific hours on projects, progress updates, etc.). This information is critical as we try to balance the requests we receive with our resources for support (including people, equipment, space, and time).

http://tinyurl.com/agenda-chair-meeting

All feedback welcome and very much appreciated! K