Online classes negotiations
Skyline secures online course requirements
Natalie Christine
Date created: 12/3/08 Section: NEWS
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The contract includes training, copyrights, compensation, class assignments, "virtual" office hours and a few other issues for online courses. However, there is no contract language addressing class size for online courses.
According to Librarian/Professor Eric Brenner, most of the faculty's greatest concern is on the workload and time needed to help each student.
"The union has been trying to get these issues negotiated for quite a while," Brenner said. "The district has been somewhat reluctant to put language on distance education until the last round of negotiations where they decided it was a good idea to finally do it."
A lot of the focus has been on training and compensation. The District Education Committee made up of about 12 faculty members from Skyline, Cañada, and College of San Mateo, are concentrating on a training program.
"A lot of the initiative that the District Education Committee has done is a faculty training program," said Patty Dilko, Professor of Early Childhood Education and Child Development. "It's where the faculty can be apart of a special study program that helps them learn how to put courses online."
The faculty that is experiencing online courses for the first time have a whole different set of concerns. The large workload of online courses seems to be the biggest concern for most of the online instructors and students.
"If classroom size and workload are controlled, more faculty might be interested in teaching online," instructor Virginia Gianoli said.
According to Dilko, the issues dealing with online courses are all pretty complicated, but offering more online classes is one of the goals.
"We have to be very strategic and thoughtful when we develop distance education and make sure it fits into the overall program that we are offering as a college," Dilko said. "That's what the Academic Senate is doing, making sure the classes are good, and also fit into the program."
There are plans for a Trust Committee to be made up of faculty, union, academic senate, and administrators. The committee will review all faculty evaluations and create new evaluation processes for online courses. Student evaluations weren't dealt with in the last negotiation and they are planning to be improved next semester.
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