There's a lot changing in distance education at the college right now, and we'd like to share as many updates as we can to help keep our members in the know. Below is a bit of information about the Brightspace transition, DE assignments and the distance ed committee.

Brightspace transition

As most of us know, the college is transitioning to Brightspace as our digital learning environment effective this fall. A group of faculty will be piloting the new program this summer and then the entire college will be using Brightspace in the fall.

As Kim notes in her adjunct update, the college has set up an official Brightspace website to share information as it becomes available.

While faculty are not required to complete Brightspace training, we strongly encourage members to take advantage of the Brightspace professional development opportunities offered by SUNY Online as well as the online tutorials and webinars linked at the bottom of the SCCC Brightspace page.

Assignments to DE courses

Questions have been rolling in regarding assignments to distance ed courses. First, faculty should know that the college distance education committee (DEC) is awaiting administrative approval on their proposed definitions for the four DE modalities we offer at SCCC, but they can be summarized as follows:

• Fully online (no mandatory synchronous meetings)
• Hybrid (some portion online, some portion on campus)
• Sufflex (specially designed rooms that allow some on-campus and some remote students to meet synchronously)
• Real-time online (remote synchronous classes, which include what used to be called combined online)

Faculty who are officially DE certified—if they have already completed the eLearning Academy (or the previous DE certification program) or if they completed the QbD 1 & 2 sequence that started during the pandemic—can be assigned to any of the four DE modalities.

Faculty who completed QbD 1 but weren't able to complete QbD 2 should have an opportunity to complete the QbD 2 sequence this summer. The FA has also supported a proposal for an intensive eLearning Academy to be offered this summer, but we are still awaiting word on the status of that proposal.

Faculty who wish to enroll in the eLearning Academy in fall 2022 should review the college brief sent by Dr. Lauren Tacke-Cushing, associate vice president for academic affairs, on March 15. To apply, faculty need to complete and submit a Course Development Form or a Course Assignment Form, both of which are available in the Online Faculty section of MySCCC. Completed forms need to reach DEC prior to their last spring 2022 meeting, so contact me immediately if you wish to do so and need any advice or assistance.

The college has decided that a one-semester extension will be made for fall 2022 so that non-DE-certified faculty will be able to teach real-time online courses, again for the fall 2022 semester only. Non-DE-certified faculty who wish to teach in any of the four DE modalities after this fall will need to complete the eLearning Academy to do so.

Finally, members should know that the college distance education committee (DEC) meets monthly—and regularly and frequently addresses issues between meetings via email—and has been working diligently to address DE issues as they arise. While we have been revising and updating the DE pages on the FA website, you can see on the policy and procedure page that DEC has a good mix of experienced and new members, most of whom have prior DE teaching experience.

Currently eight representatives on this 11-person committee are FA members, so faculty voices are central to its work, and if you have questions you should feel free to reach out to your campus governance reps and/or contact me as the FA representative.