Minutes of the Online Education Committee Meeting

Present: Dr. Jenny Crisp, Pat Horton, Jonathan Marks, Dr. Tami Tomasello, Andrea
Roberson, Holli Goodwin, Dr. Gina Kertulis-Tartar, David Brown, Barbara Tucker,
Melissa Whitesell
Meeting was called to order at 3:30pm by Barbara Tucker who is replacing Dr. Andy
Meyer as co-chair of the committee.
I. Past Business
Accessibility
Andrea Roberson reported that the new buzzword for accessibility on college
campuses is electronic compliance. She has completed the two-part training for
DSC faculty and staff members. Over 100 participated with 2/3 taking part in faceto-face sessions, while the rest used the online tutorial available in D2L. The
responses on the evaluations were overall very positive.
If a professor shows a video in class, it must include audio descriptions. This
regulation took effect in January 2015. Audio descriptions allow a blind students
listening to a video to have description of images. Dalton State contracts with
Alternative Media Center to obtain audio descriptions and captioning for videos. If
you have any questions or need captioning or audio descriptions for a video used in
your course, please contact Andrea.
There has been discussion about the creation of a special committee to deal with
Accessibility issues on our campus. Andrea, Dr. Stone and Dr. Meyers discussed this
and feel that several departments/offices should be represented and perhaps a fulltime position be created. Dr. Meyers will approach the interim president, Dr.
Venable for further direction. The OE committee recommended that OCIS be
represented on the committee, and perhaps tech fees or grant monies could help
supplement costs for implementation and staff.
Accessible Future Workshop will be held at Emory on April 10-11, 2015. Up to 3
representatives from each campus may attend, but you must apply. If accepted, we
will send Dr. Crisp, Pat Horton, Jonathan Marks and/or Melissa Whitesell.
New Website Jonathan demonstrated the latest version of the website redesign. It is much more
responsive for mobile devices and includes links to student demographics (current
roadrunners, online students) as well as interactive calendar and campus map. It
will have a Quick Link to online education programs and academic resources for
accessibility statement. Committee recommended that Accessibility Statement be
linked from the main page.

New Roles for Committee

Pat Horton will be able to provide more training on GAView/D2L. Tom Gonzalez is
also a D2L Administrator and said he would be willing to provide one-on-one training
for faculty.
II. New Business
Affordable Textbook Initiative Dr. Molly Zhou and David Brown received a grant in Phase 1 and are applying for
another grant. Dr. Sarah Mergel and Mr. Matt Hipps have also applied for a grant to
create a new electronic FYES textbook.
David gave a demonstration of the materials used for Dr. Zhous open source
textbook for EDUC 2130.
Promotion of Online Courses/Programs
There is still confusion over who are peer mentors and peer reviewers. Pat Horton
has volunteered to identify peer mentors from each school or department and
update in the OE LibGuide. Possible ways to promote might be to target message
using DSC Facebook and other social media sites. Jonathan said to send messages
to him and he can post.
In previous meeting it was mentioned that Academic Affairs had $25,000 grant for
Adult Education purposes and that it might be possible to apply for grant from DSC
foundation to create a student tutorial to prepare for online/hybrid classes. Barbara
stated that the grant funding has ended. Dr. Kertulis-Tartar reminded the committee
that the tuition for online classes is higher and we could possibly use some of these
funds for advertising, staffing, etc. We need to verify where the additional funds are
currently allocated.
After discussion, it was recommended that in order to encourage faculty to create
online courses, we could incorporate a statement in the position postings, or at
least dialogue during the interview process. While it would certainly not be an
employment requirement, the understanding up-front that learning to develop
online classes would be desirable for DS could lay the foundation for building a
larger online course development campus.
Meeting was adjourned at 5:00 pm.
Next meeting will be held March 16 at 3:30pm in room 113 of the Roberts Library.
Respectfully submitted,

Melissa Whitesell