KASKASKIA COLLEGE

Distance Learning Committee

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

L 107 Teaching and Learning Center 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Present were Steve Jerden-Chair, Irina Neuman-Co-Chair, Joyce Pryor, Jeff Sulcer, Wayne Watkins, and Sue Aman

Minutes

IT will be taking Blackboard offline from August 2nd until August 7th to do upgrades to the system. Blackboard will be unavailable to ALL users during these dates and time.

July 29^th	Summer classes end
Aug 1^st	All grades are due
Aug 2^nd	Blackboard production server is taken out of service
Aug 2^nd – 7^th	IT will reconfigure drives and test server (Blackboard will be UNAVAILABLE to ALL users)
Aug 8^th	Blackboard is back in service

The issue of State Authorization of Distance Learning Classes was presented and discussed.  We are no longer giving financial aid to out-of-state students. 49 Letters requesting information on licensing distance learning in each state have been sent out. A "Dear Colleague" letter has been issued by the Department of Education providing a grace period until July 1 of 2014 as long as we are making a good-faith effort to comply with this directive. Presently, all out-of-state students will be flagged and contacted by admissions on an individual basis as to whether we can enroll them or not. Information about Kaskaskia College out-of-state enrollment of online students for the past three years is available at the State Authorization of Distance Learning Web page link.

The Distance Learning office is continuing its review of online course content. Starting with entry level classes, the faculty committess have certified 5 online classes using the rubric to assess online course structure and content. Seven more online courses are being assessed at present; CHCA 128, PSCI 101, GEOG 101, CHEM 101, CHEM 103, ENGL 101, and PSYH 100.

IT is in the beginning stages of installing Blackboard 9 so that we can test it.  We will provide updated information as we progress.