SACS Compliance Certification Report (PDF) - South Florida State ...

Technology Helpdesk to provide students, faculty, and staff with assistance with their academictechnology needs.Expanded online and hybrid course offerings, the implementation the Desire2Learn, and the eLearningHelp Desk have contributed to increased enrollment in online and hybrid courses. Growth isevident in the online learning environment system as well in the services our eLearning team provides.Not only has the number of online courses grown, the variety of online course offerings has grown aswell. During 2009, 84 different courses were offered in an online format. This is an 11% increase overthe previous year. The 40-hour workshop series for faculty to learn to develop and teach online courses,called the “Technology Institute” has seen a total of 75 participants and 61 completers. Due to the largenumber of faculty members who have completed this training, throughout 2009, 26 new courses weredeveloped during 2009 in an online format. This is a 38% increase over the previous year.Hybrid/blended courses are becoming increasingly popular as faculty utilize the Internet and other formsof technology to augment their lectures and supplemental course materials. In addition to the opportunityfor SFCC students to achieve an Associate in Arts degree entirely online, many of our Associate inScience degree, Associate in Applied Science degree, and certificate programs may also be achievedthrough online courses. This allows many stakeholders in our community to continue their education in amore flexible environment.Faculty interested in using instructional technology may receive training in best practices of deliveringeLearning courses. The eLearning department provides faculty with a series of online, group, and oneon-onetraining sessions on a variety of topics related to instructional technology, androgogy andeLearning. These training programs have been developed to address various levels of faculty competencywhen integrating technology into courses. Master course development policies and procedures have beendeveloped for all eLearning courses and include content mapping to student learning outcomes asindicated by the eLearning Handbook. The course master is designed by a trained faculty member andreviewed by a technology review team as well as a course review team. This course review team includesa faculty member (appointed by the instructional supervisor) as a subject matter expert partnering withan instructional technologist and other experts as the curriculum demands to review the course forquality content and design. As detailed in the eLearning Handbook, the course design team uses amodified rubric as initially developed by Quality Matters. Additional information about services providedby the eLearning Department is available on its Web page.The college provides students with Intranet networking on and between campuses, Internet access, twowayaudio-video conferencing, and an abundance of computer workstations in open and specializedlaboratories as identified in the institution's Instructional Computer Report. The college's threecampuses and center are equipped with wireless Internet access points so students and faculty canaccess Internet resources from almost anywhere on each of the college's sites. To ensure that theinstitution's classroom, laboratory, and faculty computers are kept current, the computer refresh programhas been implemented by the SFCC Information Technology department. This is a process for refreshing(recycling) all college-owned computers on a four-year cycle. SFCC is in year four of the program whichallows the college to have computers that are no older than four years and 11 months.To meet goals in the Technology Master Plan, the college recently upgraded the equipment in thevideo conferencing classrooms. The video conferencing unit on Highland’s campus in B-300 is a custombuilt Polycom Large Class Station HDX9004 (top of the line, High Definition). This unit has threemonitors, a touch control panel, Hitachi Smart Sympodium, DVD/VCR, and a document camera. Thissystem also has an RSS recorder for limited recording of videoconferencing sessions. The othercampuses and center have a smaller HDX8004 systems at each location with two monitors and aDVD/VCR. The SFCC University Center has a Tandberg standard definition system consisting of three TV’Swith touch panel, DVD/VCR, document camera. The college also has three Tandberg 880 set top modelsthat can be used as portables in various locations. All of our systems are TCP/IP (Internet) based.Students often require technical assistance after normal college service hours. The eLearning Departmenthas South developed Florida Community several Collegemultimedia and pdf tutorials describing “how to” use the major components Page 110 of / 202 theLearning Management System. These tutorials are found on the college’s Web site. SFCC's library alsostrives to provide after hours technical assistance through online tutorials for students to learn Library