Steve Hill, Times Staff

An Academic Senate meeting was held virtually on May 5 at 2:10 p.m. in order to discuss the future of education.
The May 5 meeting consisted of approximately 50 participants.

The agenda consisted of several topics including:

• Summer and fall addendum plan
• Synchronous classes
• Election
• eLumen assessment
• Annual and comprehensive forms

Participants discussed the summer and fall addendum plan that allows more instructors to use distance education.

“Two weeks ago I was here about our need for providing both a summer and fall distance education blanket addendum which includes a professional development plan,” Alejandro Lopez, executive committee president said.

There are basic things that need to be addressed before this can happen, such as Canvas and accessibility. Also, workshop evaluation is required. The workshops need to be put together.

SJCC mathematics instructor Chris Frazier said that some classes had no option but to be synchronous.

“So one of the things we found … is that many of our faculty members really had to go synchronous,” Frazier said. “ If you have designed a class that is not synchronous and … not online, and you suddenly popped online because of a catastrophe, the only way to guarantee regular and effective contact hours and keep the same grading structure is to keep the synchronous structure.”

Frazier also said so many faculty have had to stay synchronous in order to stay legal.

The Academic Senate also decided to reopen their voting process. They are trying to adapt their spring election through summer because of the coronavirus pandemic. However, the Senate voted to postpone the election until the fall.

“At the Last meeting, I was under the understanding that whoever was nominated at that time, then it was a closed nomination; and we would not open up our nomination process again,” Lopez said.

Next, there was a discussion about what eLumen could do for student learning outcome assessments.

“I think most of you know I have been working on eLumen over a year and the whole point of taking this time was to make sure that we really got to know what eLumen can do for us. So at this point I feel that we have done a lot,” said Judith Bell, executive committee vice president. “We’ve gotten a lot of experience, we’ve done some practicing and we are in a position now where we have a nice barrier overlap between the time that we need to adopt eLumen as a college and the overlap we have with Track at that time.”

Bell also discussed information that was obtained and other aspects of eLumen that were valuable for the college.

The SLO committee and others have voted to change the eLumen’s program review annual and comprehensive forms.

They decided to make the curriculum area part of the annual form; it’s about updates and updated SLOs. The comprehensive form is where all the program outcomes are supposed to be assessed.

There was also information about the mapping, the example of an assessment, report or reflection on how the course has led to improvement or change.

Attendees included:

• Alejandro Lopez-executive committee president
• Robert Wing-library specialist
• Jose Cabrera-chemistry instructor
• Carlos Chavez-counselor
• Heather Jellison-treasurer and also executive committee

The meeting was adjourned at 4:46 p.m.