Office of Distance Learning
HR-300
443-518-4440

David Buck
Director of Distance Learning
443-518-4290 (ST248)

Carolyn Cain
Office Supervisor -- Math and Distance Learning
443-518-4440

Functions of the Office of Distance and Alternative Learning

All distance and alternative learning course-related administrative functions are conducted through the Office of Distance Learning. 

Specifically, the Office of Distance Learning (ODL)

• Hires and evaluates faculty for all distance and alternative learning courses: online courses, Telecourses, Fast Track, and 2-Way interactive courses. These hires are usually made, however, in cooperation with division chairs, particularly in the case of assignments of full-time faculty. Rehiring is based on results of the IDEA survey, adherence to the Standards of Best Practices, responsiveness to student and administrative issues, and other factors such as keeping updated course materials and maintaining student contact. 
• Administers course contracts, book orders, and grade rosters. Faculty submit all book orders, grade rosters (both third week NA rosters and final rosters) to the ODL, including all grade-associated forms, such as incomplete grade forms. Contracts are distributed to faculty (both full- and part-time) in their mailboxes, which are located in their respective division offices, not in the office of DL. Please call Carol Cain at ext. 4021 if you are a part-time faculty member and you would like us to snailmail your contract to you.
• Processes all student complaints about distance and alternative courses.
• Processes plagiarism cases in DL courses. In cases of plagiarism in distance and alternative courses, faculty send documentation to the director of distance learning, who takes further action according to the policy about student academic honesty. A copy of this documentation should also be sent to the appropriate division chair.
• Processes all student paperwork related to overrides in DL courses.

The Director of Distance Learning also

• Pays faculty salaries. See the college full- and part-time faculty salary schedule.
• Pays for new online course development and for revisions on a case-by-case basis.  The pay for new course development is based upon the amount a particular faculty member would be paid for teaching the course once as overload, or as an adjunct contract.  See the Standards of Best Practice Guidelines for details about how and when faculty members are paid for course development. TeleWeb course development is paid on a case-by-case basis.  
• Provides training in course platform.
• Evaluates courses according to standards of best practice.
• Regularly observes online and other distance learning faculty.

Hybrid and Weekend College

• Please note that Weekend College and hybrid courses are administered through the division offices, not through ODL.

Online Courses

Developing a New Online Course

• In order to develop an online course, the faculty member must take the entire LMS training sequence offered by the director of distance learning. 
• Courses must be developed using the college's approved LMS, unless the faculty member has compelling reasons for doing otherwise. In such cases, the faculty member must prove that student confidentiality is maintained and that all copyright issues have been resolved.
• Routine revisions and updates are part of the regular teaching load.
• If a faculty member believes that his or her course needs substantial revisions or additions or updates, the faculty member can apply for a grant to make these revisions.  There are two sources for grants: summer grants and online course revision grants funded through the Office of Distance Learning.  Major revisions are paid on varying scale, depending upon magnitude of revision.  See guidelines.
• Routine revisions and updates are part of the regular teaching load.
• If a faculty member believes that his or her course needs substantial revisions or additions or updates, the faculty member can apply for a grant to make these revisions.  There are two sources for grants: summer grants and online course revision grants funded through the Office of Distance Learning.  Major revisions are paid on varying scale, depending upon magnitude of revision.  See guidelines.

Online Course Design and Course Templates

• We encourage faculty to use the course templates that we provide: Orientation, Syllabus, Assignment Sheet, and Course Modules.
• Templates are available in Word or FrontPage format.  Contact Virginia Kirk if you need these templates.
• These templates can be downloaded from the “S” drive under the Online Course Development folder, or they can be obtained on disk from the ODL.  Call Carol Cain at 443-518-4440 to request a disk.
• Faculty should use the principles of good course design as outlined in the PowerPoint presentation on course design.  This PPT is also on the “S” drive.

Standards of Best Practices and Online Course Reviews

• The Director of Distance Leanring and the appropriate division chair (or designee) review each newly developed online course using the Principles of Best Practice in the Design and Delivery of Online Courses at Howard Community College as a guide.  Once a course has been approved, the Director of Distance Learning and an appropriate content faculty member observe it as part of the observation process for online faculty and courses. Each online course and instructor are observed at least once every three years.  
• Faculty members may teach the course once before submitting the checklist.  If the checklist is not submitted or the course does not meet minimum standards for content and design, the course will not be offered.
• Faculty are to send a copy of the minimum standards both to the appropriate division chair and to the director of distance learning.

Peer Partners

• We encourage new online faculty to work in peer partnership with experienced online faculty.
• Please contact the director of distance learning to make arrangements for a peer partner.
• Full-time peer partners should make this arrangement part of their MAPS.

Individualized Help with Online Course Development 

If you have completed your course materials and need help with uploading files and organizing your site, call the Director of Distance Learning or your division liaison. See list in the FAQ for Online Faculty on the DL homepage under Faculty Resources.

Taking Over an Already Developed Online Course

• Faculty who are “taking over” an already developed course must also have completed LMS training, although this is not as intensive as the training for a developer. 
• As a general rule, a faculty member who uses an already developed site is not paid for changes/revisions he or she may choose to make to the site.  If the faculty member believes that the revisions he or she wants to make are truly significant, he or she may apply for a grant (see grant application form) to support such revisions.  The director of distance learning decides whether or not the grant request is reasonable.

Observation of Online Faculty and Courses

• As part of the regular observation of faculty, online faculty and courses are reviewed once every three years. New online faculty are observed the first semester they teach. New online courses are reviewed for standards of best practice, see above, either the semester before they are offered the first time or during the first semester they are offered. 

Class Size and Late Enrollments — Online Courses

• Class size in online courses is limited to 20.
• Additional students may be added to the course with the consent of the instructor.  The instructor must phone, email, or speak directly with the Office of Distance Learning to give this consent. Students may not relay this information.  Students who are admitted on an overload basis must pick up an override form from the ODL.
• A faculty member may choose to let more than 20 students into an online course, up to a maximum of 30 students.  For each student over 20 who completes the course, the instructor will be compensated an additional per-student amount.  (As of fall 2003, the amount is $100 per student.)
• After the late registration period, students may be added to an online course with the instructor’s permission.  Paperwork is handled through the Office of Distance Learning, not the discipline division offices.

Online Course Orientations

When possible, a face-to-face orientation should be scheduled.  Although we do not require a faculty member to hold a face-to-face orientation, we strongly encourage it.  These orientations are usually held on the Saturday before the semester begins.  In addition to the face-to-face orientation, each online course should have an orientation document on the course site.  See the orientation template we provide for more information about the on-site orientation template.

Ideally, face-to-face orientations are scheduled at the time the schedule of classes is produced so that these orientations can be announced in this schedule.  Look for a message from the ODL regarding scheduling of face-to-face orientations.  If you do not respond and request an orientation, an orientation will not be scheduled for your course. 

Backups of Online Courses

Should you make a mistake and delete students or some other important part of your course, do not have a heart attack.  SCS has put in place an automatic backup system.  All courses are backed up each night. Please call Virginia Kirk (ext. 4911) if you need to have your course restored.

Archived Online Courses

At the end of each semester, we (Office of Distance Learning) archive your online course(s). This archive is like a “snapshot” of your entire course activity for the semester, including all student interaction, assignments, communications, and so on.  In the event that we need to check student participation or grades, we can restore this copy. 

We have been archiving courses for a couple of semesters and already it has proven useful in cases where, for example, a students has claimed that he should get a refund for a course in which he claims he had never participated.  We were able to restore an archived copy, so we could check his claim.

1. You will be notified when the archiving will take place and when it has been completed.
2. Please do not reset your courses until you have been notified that archiving has been completed.

Incompletes in Online Courses

When you turn in your final grades, be sure to turn in the “I” grade form.  This alerts us that we will need to make a copy of your course and leave it on the server so these “I” grades can be completed.  We will leave the copy of the course with the “I” grade students on the server until you notify the Office of Distance Learning that the “I” grades have been made up by submitting a change of grade form.

1. Once your course has been archived, please delete all students who completed the course, leaving only the “I” grade students.
2. Once an “I” grade has been completed, please fill out a change of grade form and notify me that it is okay to reset and/or delete the course from the server. 

Help Desk — 443-518-4444

The Help Desk is available at 443-518-4444.  This is a centralized information source for the entire college.

When To Call the Help Desk

Faculty should call the Help Desk if they

• need help with their hardware—computers, printers, classroom equipment, and so on;
• suspect that the Canvas server is down;
• need help with college-provided software, such as any of the Microsoft Office products.

Faculty should call The Director of Distance Learning if they

When To Call the Office of Distance Learning

Faculty should call David Buck if they:

Server Maintenance

The director of distance learning works directly with Student Computer Support (SCS) for regular maintenance of the LMS server, platform upgrades, problems with the LMS platform functionality, platform licensing issues, software compatibility issues, global population, and archiving/restoring courses.  SCS contacts the software provider to research and solve system problems or glitches.

Online Faculty Meetings

All full-time faculty members who teach online are required to attend the online faculty meetings held during faculty development periods.  Part-time faculty are welcome and encouraged to attend, but are not required to do so.

Internet Service Provider (ISP) Reimbursement

The ODL will pay part of your ISP costs on a per-semester basis.  The college will either provide a Starpower account for your use or will reimburse you the equivalent amount.  Call 443-518-4440 for more information.

IDEA Survey

Each semester, selected online courses are evaluated using the IDEA survey.  Faculty are expected to distribute a message from the Office of Distance Learning regarding the IDEA survey and they are expected to encourage students to fill out the survey.  The ODL will distribute the survey results during the subsequent semester.

TELECOURSES

Orientations/Class Meetings

All telecourse faculty are required to have at least five class meetings with their students. T hose meetings include a mandatory orientation session and four other meetings (two of which must be used for discussion and review).  The other two may be used for exams.  Faculty members are encouraged to use the Test Center to administer tests and to use the other two meetings for additional lectures and discussions.  Faculty members should urge students to attend all class sessions.

For courses with lab components, the meeting time will be increased above the two hours to allow for work in the lab.

Faculty must contact students who do not attend that first meeting within a week of its date to determine if the student will be able to complete the course.  The week after the first meeting, faculty must forward a list of all participating students to the Office of Distance Learning.  This list will be used to produce sets of mailing labels for faculty use, so it’s important that all student names be included and addresses verified.

Maintaining Contact With Students

Faculty are expected to provide students with daytime/evening phone numbers and/or email address so students can easily reach faculty.  This information should include times when faculty are most readily available.  Faculty should check their answering machines, voice mail or email regularly for messages.  They must notify their students and the director of distance learning in advance if they are going to be out of town or otherwise unavailable for an extended period.

Course Materials

Each faculty must submit his or her course materials (course descriptions, syllabus, assignment sheets, significant handouts) to the ODL for our records.

As part of the syllabus, faculty must list due dates for all assignments and indicate when assignments received after those dates will not be accepted for full credit. 

Upon request, the ODL will provide word processing and other administrative support to telecourse faculty. This support includes typing and test management, such as coordination of tests with printing and the Test Center.

Salaries

Telecourse faculty will be paid at the same rate as part-time faculty in regular credit divisions, because the expectation is that as much (or more) work goes into teaching a telecourse as with a regular credit course. Telecourses differ in delivery, but not content, and students are expected to be as prepared as those participating in a regular credit course.

All telecourse faculty, whether full-time faculty or new or returning part-time faculty, are required to attend an orientation meeting each session, which will be held before one of the functions during the faculty development period.

Course Evaluations/IDEA Surveys/Outcomes Assessments

All telecourse faculty members will be evaluated through in-class visits and the IDEA survey, a standard student evaluation form used by all credit divisions.

The college is focusing on outcome assessments for courses in the general education core, and all forms of delivery will be included.  If you course is selected, we will work with you to ensure the process goes smoothly and we participate fully.