Oct. 22, 2007

Siletz Room

Present: Ann Adams, Lori Rowton, Alan Heywood, Parker Swanson, Jennifer Beudert, Alice Sperling, Marlene Propst, Chareane Wimbley-Gouveia, Susan Clark, Jayme Frazier, Carol Raymundo, Jerry Wille, Elizabeth Lundy, Carol Schaafsma, Rob Lewis, Dawn McNannay, Dan Lara, Paul Hagood and student representative, Louann Van Beek.

Welcome and Introductions (Jennifer Beudert) Jennifer opened the meeting by leading introductions of committee members, and introducing Susan Clark, our new Instructional Designer and chair-elect of the DEIT committee.

Susan Clark distributed a handout that showed the past process of online course development at LBCC, and identified problem issues with this former process (Handout available upon request from Lori Rowton). The handout showed other models of online course development, and highlighted a new course design process she would like to use in her position as instructional designer.

Ann Adams gave a brief overview of the historical perspective of DEIT. DEIT has been operating for 10+ years, and has morphed from a “skunk works” (i.e. a group of interested parties with no formal sanction) to a structured committee with five subcommittees. The 2006-07 committees were Training, Web Presence, Student Services, Technology Fee and Technology Initiatives. Because several of these committees are doing so well on their own, and have become somewhat “departmentally” driven (i.e. Web Presence and Student Services), it is now being proposed to reorganize DEIT this year. The new subcommittees would be Strategic Planning, Technology Initiatives, DEIT Grants and Training, and Technology Fee.

Web Presence will function independently under leadership from Marketing and Student Services will keep meeting under leadership from the Dean of Student Services. Representatives who serve on both DEIT and these committees will function to keep DEIT in touch.

The Strategic Planning committee will focus on e-Learning and current Action Steps as it applies to the college-wide Strategic Plan. The Technology Initiatives group will be the “pioneering” committee, where faculty can bring ideas as related to distance and distributed education and policy changes. The DEIT Grants and Training committee will focus on training for faculty to develop and design online courses, identifying course objectives, course assessment, and quality assurance of courses developed. The Technology Fee committee will continue to operate independently of DEIT, but will report once a term to the committee as to what new and upcoming technology projects, implementations, upgrades and infrastructure requests have been approved, and/or completed.

Jennifer distributed handouts of the current DEIT Operating Guidelines, and a revised copy (Handouts available upon request from Lori Rowton). There was much discussion as to whether or not the revised guidelines were different enough to identify the new focus of DEIT. In addition, there was expressed concern that the guidelines didn’t identify clearly where we want to go with distance learning, and a strategy for getting there. Carol Schaafsma noted that we are just starting the reorganization and identifying the new focus of DEIT, and that it is hoped that this process will help us gain specific direction on where to go with distance education, and its processes.

A motion was made to approve the new subcommittees, and seconded. Paul Hagood agreed to chair the Technology Initiatives committee, with mentoring from Ann Adams and Alan Heywood.

NEXT MEETING: Nov. 26^th from 2-4:00pm, Siletz Room