The department held it’s first-Tuesday meeting, and I took notes! Here’s the important stuff — plus a couple things I learned after the meeting. If you were at the meeting, let me know if I forgot anything important. If not, I hope this is reasonably informative.
WLDC Surveys for students and for faculty
Shawn and Kiara announced that they’ve created two relatively short surveys, one targeted at faculty (that’s us!) and one at students. These are meant to help the center improve, in particular how to improve how we get word out to the students.
So please, if you are willing, please import the WLDC student survey into your course (it’s formatted as a quiz). Here’s a basic “how-to,” as I understand the process.
- Log in to your Canvas
- Click on this link (right here, in this blog post): WLDC student survey. If you click that link while logged in, it should take you directly to the quiz.
- Click “Import/Download” and choose the courses you’d like to import the survey into.
- Announce it to students. Extra credit might encourage more students to respond, but that’s up to you.
Also, please fill out the WLDC Feedback (Instructors) survey. It’s a Microsoft Form, with only a few questions. It shouldn’t take long.
The information from both of these surveys, as I said, will help the center improve. This is especially important now, as Brian Jukes is taking over the coordinator position (or most of it). This will help him prioritize the work as he gets his bearings.
End-of-semester SLO meeting PLUS the eLumen pilot
It’s been a long time since we last discussed this, but I hope you remember: The English Dept. agreed to pilot the process for entering SLO results into eLumen. This means that SLO reporting will be different this semester: instead of reporting totals to me through a Google Form (which I then aggregated and uploaded to TracDat), each instructor will enter SLO results for each student into eLumen.
Don’t panic! It’s not difficult at all, and not much more time consuming than the old way. And it will give the Outcomes committee a lot of help as they learn eLumen, and as they further develop promising practices for better use of SLO data. Just one example: entering SLOs in for each student will allow us to disaggregate the results to see if we have any disproportionate impacts that should be interrogated. (I’ll add that eLumen has privacy protections for faculty, so –at least as I understand it — these results couldn’t be used to single out individual faculty, even if we wanted to (which we don’t).)
We can discuss all this further at the end-of-semester SLO meeting that we hold at the end of… well, at the end of each semester. We are planning to devote a portion of that meeting to an eLumen workshop, where Shawn (our Outcomes coordinator) will walk everyone through the process of entering the SLO results. You can, at the meeting, enter your results (if you have them) during the meeting. And if you don’t have the results yet — I know that some people use their final essay as the assessment tool, and may not have them graded in time for the meeting — you’ll still be able to walk through much of the process so it won’t be brand new when you get to it.
We’ll also have a walk-through handout with screenshots for those who can’t make the meeting. There’s also a walk-through video that we can link to (though it includes more than is needed for just entering in results). And Shawn (and I) will always be available to help, if that’s needed.
We’re scheduling that meeting during finals week, the week of May 24. I’ve created a Google Form Poll that will help me set the time for this meeting. Please choose all the times that you are available. I will choose the one that (a) works for Shawn and myself (since we’re running it), (b) has the most people available, and (c) is latest in the week.
Note that Friday, May 28, is Commencement. The main commencement is set, as last year, for 7:30 pm. However, they are also running a drive-thru ceremony. I’m not sure about all the details yet; they said at the last all-college Zoom meeting (I refuse to say “YuZoom”) that they’d send out an announcement in email soon, so keep your eyes open for that. But I believe that they’ve set the English department version on Friday afternoon, which is why I did not include Friday afternoon on the list of options for our meeting.
PS: Remember that part-time faculty get paid for this meeting (as opposed to being eligible for Flex, which no one needs at this time).
Quick Reports
Fall semester
As I mentioned in the meeting, I have no additional information about fall. I’ve turned in the schedule, which Don has been working to get updated. Apparently, a few people have Canvas shells that don’t match their schedule; if that is the case for you, please contact Don (dmsith2@yccd.edu), as this is above my pay grade.
In general terms, we’re planning to be back in the classroom. Of course, the details of what that means (or even if that will happen) depends on the state of the pandemic at that time. I’ve not been encouraged by reports of how the vaccine-hesitant might make it so that we don’t end up with the herd immunity via vaccination that we’d expected. But we’ll see. That’s outside of our control.
Course Cap Discussions
Aree Metz and Kevin Ferns from Woodland, and Brian Jukes and I from Yuba, met with the deans to have the discussion about course caps for our composition classes.
Unfortunately, I think the discussion is, or risks, being swallowed up in a larger discussion that the district has decided it wants to have: there are a number of courses where the caps don’t match across the district, which isn’t supposed to be allowed by the full-time faculty contract.
So they’ve put together a process that doesn’t even follow the letter of the contract, in my view, let alone the spirit of it. The cynical part of me — which I try to keep under control, but is really itching right now — thinks that this is basically a way to set course caps according to what the district would like to see, given its interest in “efficiency” and enrollment management. I hope I’m wrong, but… <shrugs>
Anyway, the four of us remain in contact with Don (our dean) and Shannon (WCC’s dean), though much of that time has been spent waiting to hear what the next step is going to be.
Rotation Schedule
In the meeting, I mentioned that I had heard some vague rumblings about course rotations and Self Service (that’s the WebAdvisor replacement, unrelated to gas stations). Since then, Carla (Yuba’s academic VP) did a presentation at the all-campus Zoom meeting (did I mention my allergy to “YuZoom”?)(stop using so many parentheses, Greg! It’s confusing!) and explained the issue in a bit more detail.
The problem is that Self Service has the rotations embedded in it, and students rely on it in planning — for example, knowing that a course is only offered in the Spring helps them develop an educational plan that includes things they’re interested in.
And, of course, the problem with that: changes happen! We added a class to the rotation, and we needed to get out of step with Woodland so we aren’t poaching each other’s students. So I’m pushing ahead. Carla said to contact the dean, which I just did. I’m not sure that there’s clarity about what they plan to do/allow/encourage yet. But I think the issue just came to light, so we shouldn’t expect perfect clarity yet.
General Education Degrees
At a previous meeting, we discussed the possibility of adopting the Arts and Humanities GE degree. At the time, it was just a twinkle in the eye of the Curriculum Committee. In particular, we were waiting for some data about the degrees. I mentioned at this meeting that I was waiting for that data, and would raise the issue when I better knew what the Curriculum Committee is discussing. (I will add that this discussion is also happening in one of the Guided Pathways Task Forces, though I’m not sure if they’re working together or in parallel.)
The day after the meeting, I received a bit of data (specifically, the number of degrees awarded) and a request to join the discussion on Friday at the Curriculum Committee meeting. I’m not available at that time… but I also let them know that we need more information before we can make a decision. I will try to get some of that information in time for the end-of-semester meeting, but I wouldn’t expect that, even with answers to the questions I’ve asked, we’d be able to give an answer this school year.
That’s all, folks
I think that’s everything. Let me know ( gkemble@yccd.edu ) if you have any questions, thoughts, insights, concerns, jokes, recommended songs, favorite books, or stock tips.
Peace.