Senate
policy advances classroom technology
By Sean Emery
On-line Forty-Niner
In
an effort to address the growing use of
technology in college classrooms, as well
as the various methods of course delivery,
the California State University Long Beach
Academic Senate recently voted in favor
of adopting an academic technology policy.
The
policy was adopted during the Academic Senate
meeting May 1. According to the policy,
“The purpose of [the] policy is to protect
the quality and climate of the educational
environment as we move to incorporate academic
technology into the mainstream of instruction
at California State University, Long Beach.”
In order to accomplish this, the policy
attempts to define the terms involved in
academic technology, outline the general
principles, and spells out the rights of
students and faculty in regards to course
delivery.
“Until
the last 50 years we have never really had
true, timely, two-way communication,” said
Wayne Dick, chairman of the Academic Senate.
“It’s a qualitative change in how we communicate
in classes, something along the lines of
the printing press.”
Work
on the policy began last spring. Dick, along
with Richard Outwater, vice president of
Academic Resources, and Christa Copp from
Academic Computing Services, decided to
begin work on the policy as a response to
a rising demand for alternate modes of class
delivery. The first draft of the policy
was put together in December of 2002. It
was taken from the concerns of different
policy councils, as well as from the policies
of other Cal State campuses.
“We
identified that there was getting to be
a large enough population of people who
were using Beachboard and other forms of
technology to teach their classes,” Dick
said. “We [realized] that we had so many
people doing it, that we needed to do something
to regulate it.”
When
the policy was originally submitted to the
Academic Senate, it was sent back to committee
to address a variety of concerns brought
up by the Senate. “The Senate
expressed a lot of concerns and we took
those concerns down and we included them
[in the policy],” Dick said.
Concerns
brought up by the Senate regarding the first
draft of the policy included the potential
misuse of it by using it as a replacement
for traditional classes in an effort to
save space. Some were also worried about
the possibility of having to go through
the administration every time they wanted
to move a class into a new form of delivery.
In
order to address these concerns, the revised
policy states: “The faculty of departments
and colleges shall govern all decisions
related to the instructional mode of courses.”
The policy also limits class size by saying,
“class size must be appropriate for the
student learning activities associated with
the course.”
“The
underlying philosophy is that the people
who use and implement the courses are the
people who are going to decide what the
structure [of the course] should be,” Dick
said
The
policy defines four types of class delivery.
The first is the traditional class, which
depends on face-to-face contact. The second
is a hybrid class, which depends on both
academic technology and face-to-face contact.
The
third is a local online class, in which
the majority of communication occurs through
academic technology, but it may have up
to two hours of face-to-face meetings per
unit. The fourth is a distance education
class, in which all the communication takes
place away from CSULB.
Also
spelled out in the policy are the rights
of faculty and students in regard to academic
technology. According to the policy, “Faculty
shall have full control over the content
of their technologically created course
materials.” Faculty will also be offered
the training and support required in teaching
a class through alternative course delivery
methods.
The
policy also guarantees students the right
to access the faculty. They are to be offered
“reasonable support services,” such as technological
support, access to administrative services,
and access to the library research database.
According
to Dick, these new methods of course delivery
are not meant to replace the traditional
classroom model. “I think it will proportion
out. There are a certain number of things
that people are going to prefer to take
in a classroom and there are going to be
certain things that are natural to teach
from a distance,” Dick said.
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