Curriculum

The requirements for offering courses or sections of courses in distance learning model were changed substantively. These changes included such key components as class size, instructor-student contact, and methods for apportionment. As part of the process of monitoring the impact of these changes, the regulations require local curriculum committees to separately review and approve courses and sections taught in distance learning mode. Guidelines were also established which include data collection and an annual report to the local board of trustees.

The course outline of record plays a central role in the curriculum of the California Community Colleges. Standards for the course outline appear in Title 5, in the Curriculum Standards Handbook, in accreditation standards, in intersegmental general education agreements with the California State University and the University of California (IGETC and CSU-GE), and serve as the basis for transfer articulation agreements with individual CSU and UC campuses.

In this paper we provide concrete ideas on how you can implement change in your course or program to incorporate content and techniques that support multicultural education. It defines multicultural education in the community college environment with an emphasis on student learning styles. An instrument for analyzing and implementing curricular change is provided in addition to curricular application examples, a glossary and a student learning style assessment instrument.

It is hoped that this paper will help local senates who have not yet undertaken the process of assigning courses to disciplines or who are updating or revising. The paper discusses why the need exists and outlines a process to help local senates get started. The process described in the paper relies on faculty's professional integrity to do an assessment of discipline preparation and course content.

Basic skills instruction is not new to higher education or to the California Community Colleges. For a variety of reasons, private and public institutions of higher learning have always had significant numbers of first year students who failed, dropped out or simply from college due to their inability to meet course requirements. In 1874, Harvard first offered freshman English at the request of faculty members dissatisfied with students' preparation in formal writing.

In response to considerable discussion about the establishment of a basic skills discipline and resolutions (numbers 9.8S90 and 9.9S90) at the Spring 1990 Session of the Academic Senate for the California Community Colleges, the Ad Hoc Basic Skills Committee which was to include credit and non-credit instructors in basic skills was established in spring 1990 for the purpose of studying the issue of whether to create a pre-collegiate basic skills discipline.

A study of models for program and services review

Since most students take humanities courses during the first two years of college, the community colleges have a particular responsibility in examining and strengthening the role of the humanities in the curriculum. Guidance is needed for our large number of undecided students "shopping" for courses to take, and a coherent humanities component is needed for our many liberal arts majors.

One of the first difficulties encountered by curriculum committees throughout the state was the establishment of a definition of critical thinking broad enough to encompass college level courses throughout the academic and vocational/technical curriculum, as well as a definition that could apply to both content-based and skill-based courses.

Questions to be examined are as follows: What is the relationship of the curriculum committee to its local senate? What is the composition of members of curriculum committees? Who chairs them? If faculty chair their curriculum committee, what is the level of institutional support? What changes are being contemplated by the local senates as a response to the statewide effort to strengthen the role of faculty in their curriculum committees? How satisfied are the senates with the composition and structure or their curriculum committees?