Office of Distance Learning
HR-300
410-772-4440

Virginia Kirk
Director of Distance Learning
410-772-4911

Carolyn Cain
Office Supervisor
410-772-4440

Dave Hinton
Science/Technology Division
410-772-4417

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.

CampusWeb and Weekend College

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

Online Courses

• In order to develop an online course, the faculty member must take the entire WebCT training sequence offered by the director of distance learning. 
• Courses must be developed in WebCT, unless the faculty member has compelling reasons to develop outside of WebCT.  In such cases, the faculty member must prove that student confidentiality is maintained and that all copyright issues have been resolved.

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 410-772-4440 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

• Faculty must submit the Checklist of Minimum Standards for Design and Delivery of Online Courses and have the course reviewed for both content and design before the course development stipend will be paid.  The course is reviewed by the director of distance learning and the appropriate division chair (or designee).  Once a course has passed minimum standards, it is reviewed by the director of distance learning and the division chair no less frequently than every 4^th semester it is taught. 
• 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 Virginia Kirk, ext. 4911, or Dave Hinton, ext. 4417, to schedule one-on-one help.  We will work with you to upload files, attach them to icons, create discussions, student presentations, quizzes, self-tests, and so on.

Taking Over an Already Developed Online Course

• Faculty who are “taking over” an already developed course must also have completed WebCT training. 
• 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.

Continued Development/Revisions of Online Courses 

• Courses come up for review every 4^th semester they are taught.
• 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.

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. 

Adding Students to a WebCT Course — We Add... You Delete

1. The ODL will populate courses at the beginning of each semester.  We will do this population daily beginning on the last day of regular registration (usually a Friday before the first day of classes), through the late registration period.
2. Students who attend orientations on the Saturday before the regular semester begins should, therefore, be able to sign on to the course site during their orientations.
3. Students who add classes during late registration will need to wait as much as 24 hours before trying to sign on, as they will not be added to their courses until the day after they enroll. 
4. Once late registration is over and regular global population ends, a student who wants to add a course must get special permission from the instructor and the director of ODL to add the course.  The student must pick up a waiver form from the Office of Distance Learning.  The ODL will add the student manually to the appropriate course.
5. When special circumstances arise, such as students switching course sections, faculty should send a request to the Office of Distance Learning to have the student added manually to the appropriate course/section.  Neither faculty nor students should contact Student Computer Support directly about adding students to courses.  All such requests must come through the Office of Distance Learning so that we can verify student registration.

Deleting Students From a WebCT Course — We Add... You Delete

1. Although faculty cannot add students to courses, they CAN delete students from courses.  (They can also deny access to selected students.)  In fact, you MUST delete students who drop your course; we don’t do this for you.  To delete a student, go to manage course/manage students and click on the last name (it’s underlined) of the student to be deleted.  Then, click on the delete option.
2. We recommend that you delete only those students who have officially dropped your course, but that you do not delete NA students or students who withdraw from the course after the drop period.  It has often proved useful to have a record of student participation.  (One student recently claimed, for example, to have dropped an online course before the semester had begun, not realizing that WebCT tracks student participation.  A quick check of student tracking revealed that the student had been on the site numerous times during the first 4 weeks of the semester.)

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 on CD a copy of 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.

Resetting Your Courses 

Once this archive has been made, you need to reset your course for the next semester.  Resetting a course means that you clear the course of student records and the record of all course activity for the semester. Resetting your course does not affect the course content itself, only student activity on the course site.

If you don’t know how to reset your course, please call Virginia at ext. 4911.

Why is it important to reset your course?

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 — 410-772-4444

The Help Desk is available at 410-772-4444.  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 WebCT server is down;
• need help with college-provided software, such as any of the Microsoft Office products.

When To Call Virginia or Dave

Faculty should call Virginia Kirk (ext. 4911) and/or Dave Hinton (ext. 4417) if they:

When To Call the Office of Distance Learning

Faculty should call Virginia Kirk if they:

WebCT Server Maintenance

The director of distance learning works directly with Student Computer Support (SCS) for regular maintenance of the WebCT server, platform upgrades, problems with the WebCT platform functionality, platform licensing issues, software compatibility issues, global population, and archiving/restoring courses.  SCS contacts WebCT 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 410-772-4440 for more information.

IDEA Survey

Each semester, 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.

Late Registrations

After the first week of class, students will not be allowed to enroll in telecourses unless it is a special case approved by the faculty member and the director of distance learning. 

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.