tkt8763-01: Class Notes: 10 November 99

[Christopher & Raydene Wolney <wolney@ebicom.net>]

Hi all,

We talked with Joseph Moreau today. He is one of the foremost experts in 
collective bargaining, issues of intellectual property, and technology 
planning for two years colleges. He is a professor at West Hills College 
http://www.westhills.cc.ca.us/ in Coalinga, CA. (Huge earthquake there 
about 8 years ago, hope all has been rebuilt well).
Additionally, he is Executive Council Member of the "Consortium for 
Distance Learning" at http://www.distlearn.com/.

Sir (Dr. Moreau), I am not a clerk typist but attempt to type key points as 
I understand them. If something is in error that I typed, please notify the 
class listserv so all can be informed as to the actual instruction you 
provided.

Technology Planning: Issues of interest

A difficult issue in technology planning is the ability to document 
planning and document how the institution is following the plan. How has 
the plan affected purchasing, staff development, training, etc. Look at in 
three ways:

a. Facilities: How to bring facilities up to the standards needed for 
implementing a technology plan?
b. Educational Program Master Plan: How will plan aid in the education of 
students.
c. Technology Master Plan: Planning and implementing technology itself.

The Technology Master Plan was the hardest of the three to put together. 
There were great philosophical differences in how technology should be 
implemented. Issues included: Should students have access to the Internet? 
How should technology be implemented and planned: top-down or bottom-up? 
Should departments need to annually submit needs for technology or should 
the technology plan have built in annual requirements for each department. 
In addition, since the college is not extremely large, some did not want to 
even have a written technology plan. They felt it would be restrictive to 
creativity later on.

Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up technology Plan: Plan needs to have a vision from 
the top but seek guidance from the users at the bottom. Plan should be have 
about 30% input from the top and then the rest of the plan (70%) should be 
written from the bottom-up.

West Hills College has experienced huge growth in the student population. 
Has the infusion of technology within the college been a significant factor 
in the growth of the college? Technology infusion has had some effect but 
community involvement has played a larger role. In addition, facility 
improvement has brought a level of pride among the population.

What are the demographics of your student population? 
http://www.westhills.cc.ca.us/demograph.html Student profiles at each site 
is different. Coalinga campus-traditional high school students. 
http://www.westhills.cc.ca.us/map.html Students at satellite centers are 
older and less non-traditional. They range from higher middle class 
individuals who want to further their education or lower class migrant farm 
workers who want to break the cycle of poverty by education.

Community colleges in California are catering more to business education. 
Laws within California have required this more vocational/technical 
education vs. typical four-year college education. However, the community 
colleges also need to have more of their courses accepted four year 
colleges (in CA they are the CSU-California State University campuses). 
This catering to businesses has significantly altered their technology 
planning. Since businesses have a high rate of change, the community 
colleges have to change with them. It is difficult to program these changes 
into the technology plan. The obsolescence cycle is increased greatly from 
a more traditional school or university.

How has the community colleges dealt with the need to have four year 
colleges accept community college credits? Students are beginning to be 
able to transfer to the CSU systems as a Junior. That have not been able to 
do this in the past but it is becoming more prevalent. West Hills Community 
College has been very active with Fresno State University in coordinating 
this transfer. General education classes have been successfully transferred 
but major specific courses have lacked the ability to transfer. 
Unfortunately, this is not a statewide phenomenon.

What courses are successful through distance education? Community colleges 
account for 16% of the distance ed. CSU systems account for most of the 
rest and the UC systems do not want to participate at all. However they (UC 
systems) are participating somewhat.

A little explanation is due here. California has three levels of state 
institutions. The community college is more vocational/technical based and 
specializes in two year degrees. The CSU systems specialize in 4-year 
degrees with some Master programs. The UC systems are full fledged 
universities which give doctorate level degrees. Unfortunately, the UC 
systems think they are better than the CSU systems and the CSU systems 
think they are better than the Community College systems. The fact is all 
offer great classes within their areas of expertise. Unfortunately all 
don't get along with each other as well as they should.

Needless to say there is a great distance education course for webmasters 
at West Hills Community College. The person in charge can be found at 
David@cisteach.com. Good guy, email him for how his course is executed. He 
likes email (psych).

How do you evaluate technology plans?
Hardware and infrastructure inventory is important
Needs Assessment: See Ted Wesley's needs assessment at 
http://www.nctp.com/articles/assess.pdf.
Use Guidebook for Planning version 2 at 
http://www2.msstate.edu/~lsa1/nctp/guide.html.

About 80-90% of the higher education institutions are developing Distance 
Education courses. One of the main factors is so institutions can grow 
their student population without growing their physical facilities. In 
addition, since the influx of personal computers linked to the Internet is 
growing, many universities are establishing distance education courses to 
stay competitive with other institutions. You do not want to be the last 
one on the block without one so everybody is establishing one.

Disposition of material of an online course. If a faculty member is 
lecturing in a university, there is no copyright involved. However, once it 
is taped or put on a tangible medium, it can then be copyrighted. However, 
who owns it-the professor or the institution? Typically what an employee of 
a company invents is the companies (work for higher). However, there was an 
exception for academics to protect academic freedom. However, this has only 
represented publication on a tangible medium like books and journals. The 
Internet is not as tangible. Courts have so far upheld that the 
intellectual property on the Internet or on a CD becomes the intellectual 
property of the institution since it is not physically in print. While 
academic property is not usually of great economic concern, faculty members 
who have spent literally hours putting something on the web (for example) 
find themselves with no power to control the material. All of these items 
were created on the college computers, etc. What is fair? Unfortunately 
nobody has decided the issue.

League for Innovation at http://www.league.org is a good site to view.

Chris Wolney

Shoot, Move, and Communicate
Armor, The Combat Arm of Decision!


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