Memo to: DEIT
From: Strategic Planning Subcommittee
Date: January 23, 2003

Our original charge was to consider issues important to planning that can affect the quality, depth and effectiveness of LBCC's distributed learning programs.

Our Subcommittee has met 6-7 times over Fall and Winter terms to develop and review formal operating guidelines for DEIT that can be approved as part of the College Rule process and that will standardize our mission and governance (membership, operating guidelines, subcommittees, leadership, and meetings). These are being presented today for approval.

Additionally, we have been developing a process for thinking strategically about distributed learning. We began by drafting a list of strategic questions that could be used to help us think about how we are planning and evaluating for distributed learning. The full document offers a list of nearly 100 questions that can be used by DEIT subcommittees (and interested others) to aid in their planning, evaluating, and goal setting related to distributed learning. We plan to post this as a PDF file online, and I will send it as an attachment to our minutes for today's DEIT meeting.

Our hope is that sections of the document will be used selectively to help refine planning by DEIT subcommittees (and interested others), to help us evaluate current policies and practices related to distributed learning, and to clarify our future vision for distributed education at LBCC.

We used several sources to develop these questions (Diane Bauer's planning document for a grant, a summary of questions from Flashlight, guidelines from current accreditation standards, and research).

These planning questions were then organized them into categories which, in turn, have been transformed into "big picture" questions.

STRATEGIC PLANNING QUESTIONS

1. What reporting mechanism defines and describes our current use of distributed learning?
2. What is LBCC's strategic plan for distributed learning? Can we articulate why we are supporting distributed learning?
3. How does our current use of distributed learning affect curricular issues (course development, teaching/learning, course structure)?
4. Is the orientation, training, recognition and ongoing support that LBCC provides staff adequate for innovative and established DE courses and projects?
5. Are the screening, remediation, computer resources, training, advising, and student services provided to students adequate to support the training and courses offered by distributed learning?
6. What kind of long-range plan do we have for planning appropriate use of facilities and technology?
7. What questions related to distributed learning are integrated into our evaluation and assessment of teaching and learning? How do we evaluate our distributed offerings?

At our meeting of January 23, 2003, Paul Snyder updated us on the "fair use" portion of the Teach Act that changes how we use copy-written materials. Paul will be working with the Media Team to develop staff workshops in March, and we will look at current LBCC policy to clarify the expectations we should have for following this new law.

Additional issues being considered by the Strategic Planning subcommittee include looking at ways to improve online "boot camp" for students (and staff), how to use student information for distributed learning students most effectively (and to predict student success or encourage teacher intervention to improve student retention and success), and to set priorities for our work for the remainder of the year.

Respectfully submitted,

Beth Camp