MELA Meeting Minutes 2003 - 2017

c. Tish mentioned that she and Jenny Jones presented at the Bb World Conference. She appreciated Terry and Christian’s support during the conference. She also added that the face- to-face interaction with Bb personnel was very beneficial. d. Blackboard World 2009 will be held in Washington D.C. during the second week of July. OPEN FORUM a. Michelle Mitchell mentioned that faculty were unable to see their survey/evaluation results in the MSVCC. The association thought that the summary of evaluation was once available to online instructors, after the final grades had been posted. The instructors do not have a need, or wish, to see the individual student’s evaluation, but a summary of the results. b. Now that our institutions will be using SafeAssign and Turnitin, we may need to consider developing college and/or state-wide policies on plagiarism. The institution will need to define plagiarism to our students and possibly even have an assignment introducing students to plagiarism. What happens when an instructor inputs a paper into one of these software instruments and a portion of that paper is plagiarized? Do we need to deduct 20% of the student’s points of fail them from the entire course, etc. The current academic honesty policy does not completely cover plagiarism. Dr. Qualls added that schools will also need to look at their intellectual property rights. The papers that are being submitted to Turnitin and SafeAssign will stay in the instrument’s databases. These companies are making money off of these student’s papers. Each college needs a policy that states something like, “as long as you are a student at this college, all materials will be considered college property.” c. James McMullan provided the group with a DLC resignation letter. He will be leading a new initiative at EMCC with the Naval Air Station. His last day as a DLC will be Monday, August 11, 2008. We will certainly miss James in the DLC Association and wish him the very best of luck with his new career endeavors. d. Chris Jenkins wanted to warn the group of a new financial aid scam that is taking place. Recently he had an instructor contact a student who had failed to take their proctored exams. The student was making good grades on all homework assignments and quizzes but had failed to take their proctored exams. When the instructor contacted the student, he stated that he was not taking any courses during the summer semester. They have another student at the institution that is contacting financial aid requesting a check as that same student. e. Audra Leverton mentioned that the calendar provided at the end of the agenda stated that no- shows were due on Friday, September 12 th . The DLC Association had agreed that those were to be submitted to all colleges by Wednesday, September 10 th . The no-show due date is Wednesday, September 10 th . f. Tish stated that there was an issue during the summer semester with the MSVCC snapshot file pulling student’s off of the non-verified list. She asked that Christian follow-up with Ive to insure that this was not occurring. g. Katie Sparkman stated that ECCC had been experiencing some problems with the rejection email for self enrollment. She’s listed the reasons for rejection, but the notification sent to students does not include the reason for rejection. Other institutions have not been experiencing this same problem.

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