Core Education Committee

Voting members present: Aidas Banaitis, Geoffrey Barstow, Abigail Crowell, Kelsey Emard, Daniel Faltesek, Colin Johnson, Lori McGraw, Brian Mills, Rene Reitsma, Kari-Lyn Sakuma, Paula Weiss
Voting members absent: Matthew Kennedy, Randy Rosenberger
Ex-officio members present: Academic Affairs – Heath Henry; Core Education – McKenzie Huber; Ecampus – Katherine McAlvage (v. Watte); Difference, Power & Oppression – Natchee Barnd; WIC – Sarah Perrault
Guests: Stephanie Baugh, Kristin Nagy Catz, Caryn Stoess

Policy: Seeking Solutions Mentorship – cont’d

• Proposed Policy:
  The purpose of mentorship and supervision in the Seeking Solutions category is to produce continuous substantive engagement and active learning. This is accomplished by involving students across different disciplines and instructors in meaningful dialogue and teamwork. The CIM proposal and syllabus must set forth a clear plan that shows how this substantive engagement will be implemented. The plan should include how students from multiple disciplines will collaborate, how every individual will contribute to teamwork, how instructors will provide mentorship to each group equivalent to 30 minutes of weekly input and/or feedback, and how accountability for the quality of teamwork will be ensured.
  • Comments from last week’s meeting were implemented into the reworked policy – defined specific terms and qualifiers.
  • Ecampus can use this definition. They just need to make a rationalization of how they are pulling off the 30 minutes of weekly input and/or feedback.
  • Flexible for different modalities but provides guidelines and it can be assessed.

Action: Motion to approve the policy as proposed; seconded. Passed with 10 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

Course reviews

• COMM 111Z – Public Speaking
  • Requesting an exception to have 4 credits, rather than 3 credits.
    • Common Course Numbering requires them to have 4 credits and making the course a hybrid course helped them get to that level.
  • No attempts at looking for Open Educational Resources (OER)
    • One of the textbooks is between $27-36.
    • The course packet is $20.
    • One of the instructors is an author on one of the textbooks.
      • Students online have posted not to buy the textbook and to just buy the packet.
    • Why does being a hybrid course benefit this course?
      • From CIM: Synchronous classes with at least 30% asynchronous learning activities. In general, using hybrid as ONE possible modality gives us flexibility in terms of scheduling, course delivery, and both instructor/student preferences. For this course, we are requiring any hybrid section to use the same hybrid material, which we crafted specifically for the hybrid mode. This contact hour includes lecture material, activities, and assignments that generally serve to accentuate the practical components of 218Z. For example, in Week 1 the material includes extra lecture surrounding the idea of communication competence, showing how IPC competence can link with later success in a host of life outcomes. The hybrid material will be regularly updated, and again will be required to be the same across all hybrid sections. Motion passed with 11 votes in favor, 0 votes in opposition and 0 abstentions.

Action: Motion to rollback and ask for a justification on their material costs and why they have not considered other OERs; seconded.

• MTH 111Z – Precalculus 1: Functions
  • Why does OSU not have a license to Alex?
  • They did provide reasonable answers for using Alex – it is a good tool and lowers DFW rates.
  • They will update their syllabus to link to the bookstore to be in compliance with state law and university policy.
  • Ecampus has not received a proposal for redevelopment yet of MTH 111, but Karen said that’s ok since it’s not undergoing a significant change in category.

Action: Motion to approve; seconded. Passed with 6 votes in favor, 1 vote in opposition and 2 abstentions.

• ECON 201 – Intro Microeconomics
  • The committee will discuss this at the next meeting.
• WR 460 – Writing of the Sea
  • The committee will discuss this at the next meeting.
• SUS 102 – Intro to Environmental Science and Sustainability
  • The department chair was not in the liaison chain and opposes the course going forward. He would like the course to be sent back so that he can review the course and make his own notes and suggestions.
  • The department chair did ask why he is not an approver step in the CIM workflow and it is somewhat of an odd situation because of the way the department is structured.
  • How can the committee address these issues in the future? Can the co-chairs review the liaisons before assigning reviewers? What happens when the college curriculum committee is inoperative?
  • The labs in course differ between on campus and Ecampus.
    • The labs are ill defined or not defined at all. The ones that are defined do not meet the definition of a lab assignment.
      • They were approved back in 2018.
      • What constitutes a lab assignment has since been more strictly defined.
  • Grades are provided through a third-party vendor, rather than Canvas.
  • Potential to send back for adding the department chair to the liaison path (or let him know he can comment), concerns with the lab assignments and third-party course materials.
  • There are some additional procedural issues that would be preventing this course from moving forward at this time.
  • The committee will continue discussing this proposal next week and see if similar issues are present in another upcoming proposal from SUS.