Technology

Whereas, California Community Colleges have largely moved to an online format because of the global COVID-19 pandemic;

Whereas, The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges has resolved to support the new distance education definitions in resolution 09.06 adopted in Spring 2019, but the Distance Education Guidelines have still not been approved by the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office;

Whereas, Technology procurement at both the state and local level should be a transparent and inclusive process that involves all impacted constituencies and factors in both the direct and indirect costs associated with the adoption of new technologies;

Whereas, System-level purchases can be both economically and functionally advantageous;

Whereas, The use of CCCApply for all students to enter the California Community Colleges System is required as part of the implementation of the Student Success and Support Program;

Whereas, CCCApply is often the first opportunity in the enrollment and onboarding process for students to make choices about their academic careers, which will have a significant impact on their time to degree and dictate their course-taking behavior once enrolled;

Whereas, Resolution 11.01 S16 directed the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges to “in order to provide guidance to local senates and colleges on best practices in online education programs, update the 2008 paper Ensuring the Appropriate Use of Educational Technology: An Update for Local Academic Senates”;

Resolved, That the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges adopt the paper Ensuring Effective Online Education Programs: A Faculty Perspective [1] and disseminate to local senates and curriculum committees upon its adoption.

MSC

Whereas, The Educational Planning Initiative (EPI) has as its primary goal the development of a student services portal that will customize and sequence matriculation information and activities to lead students toward successful completion of their goals and an Education Planning and Degree Audit System to provide transcript, articulation, and curriculum inventory elements to colleges in order to help counselors reach more students;

Whereas, The 2013-2014 Budget Act enacted the governor’s Online Education Initiative to expand access to online education in the California Community College System and allocated $16.9 million for that purpose, and furthermore the Chancellor’s Office established the California Community College Online Education Initiative (OEI) to realize this legislation through the creation of the OEI Online Course Exchange;

Whereas, Resolution 12.04 F14 “Using Anticipated Savings from Adopting the Common Course Management System to Support Online Faculty Professional Development Needs” urged “local senates and bargaining units to work with their administrations to ensure monetary savings from a district or college transitioning to a Common Course Management System (CCMS) be used primarily to support the professional development needs of distance education faculty making the transition to the new CCMS;”

Whereas, The creation of educational programs, including professional development, technology, and curriculum standards, is an area of faculty primacy regardless of modality, and an increasing number of colleges are creating or expanding online programs in response to student interest in online courses, degrees, and certificates;

Whereas, Each of the current technology initiatives (Common Assessment, Educational Planning, and Online Education) may require the development of a database that tracks student information on the basis of a random student identifier; and

Whereas, The cost of developing discrete databases using discrete student identifiers would exceed that of developing a single database with a federated student identifier capable of supporting current and future technology and other initiatives;