April 2020
We want our members to be aware of a few important things for the rest of this semester and heading into the summer sessions:
Details on each are below. Fully online courses can have no mandatory synchronous elements Having spent weeks training faculty in Blackboard in our scramble to remote learning, I am acutely aware that many faculty are relying on programs like Collaborate and MS Teams (or Zoom or other web conferencing programs) to work with their students through synchronous meetings—that is, meetings that require everyone to log in and be present on the same date and time. This is fine given that the current pandemic has forced us into remote learning. However, it is critical for our classroom faculty members to know SCCC has a longstanding policy against having any mandatory synchronous meetings in fully online classes. This includes any on-site meetings or same-time meetings over the internet such as by using Collaborate. For example, if a faculty member wanted to propose a fully online art history course that includes one mandatory meeting on a specific Saturday at MoMa, the college distance education committee (DEC) would require the faculty member to propose it as a blended/hybrid course. Or if a faculty member wanted to propose a fully online course but have two online-proctored exams that would require students to take the midterm and final on a specific date and time, DEC would require them to propose it as a blended/hybrid course. This is because for blended/hybrid courses, to be fair to students, they must be notified at the point of registration of all mandatory synchronous meetings. Here's why all of this matters right now. The college announced via email on April 15 that "all courses in the first five-week and first eight-week session will be offered in the online modality" and that "a second eight-week session [will] provide the opportunity to offer face-to-face courses over eight weeks... from June 22 to August 11. However, these classes may need to run in the online or remote modality if our social distancing mandate is extended." For summer session 1, our understanding from administration is that this means faculty putting in for and accepting those assignments may not include any mandatory synchronous activities. Students will be signing up for these courses with an understanding that they're fully online. For the second eight-week summer session, any faculty who put in for and accept those courses will know that their students are signing up with an understanding that there will be some synchronous work, so if summer session 2 courses are shifted to remote learning, synchronous meetings will be allowed. Collaborate's end date I've been in contact with the Center for Innovative Pedagogy, which oversees distance education at the college, to inquire whether faculty will have access to Collaborate after the end of the spring 2020 semester. I am told that SCCC will have Collaborate through June 30. However, Open SUNY is in conversation with Blackboard to see if this can be extended. Remember, however, as explained above, that even if we have Collaborate through the summer, faculty during summer session 1 or other fully online courses may not mandate synchronous meetings or work for their students. College office webpages and contact info Below is a list of important SCCC offices compiled by Kevin McCoy. Click the name of any office to visit its SCCC webpage, or click any of the email links to send an email. As shown in Kevin's article about non-classroom faculty efforts to support students through this remote learning, the following list really illustrates that all of our members have stepped up to the plate in the past month. Academic Advisement & Counseling
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