MELA Meeting Minutes 2003 - 2017

c. E-audit of Online Classes-Discussion covered in V.a. above. d. Determining “No Shows” i.

Margaret Britt, Co-Lin, asked about the drop/add policies of individual schools. 1. After discussion, the group found that some schools record the drops as a “W” while others completely remove the student from all systems 2. Mark Smith asked for guidelines to determine a “W” policy. Mr. Smith stated that a withdrawal with “W” policy had never been decided by vote. Individual schools have been given the right to establish other forms of “W”. 3. It was determined that most schools have a drop/add period of one week. 4. Members of the association asked that the MSVCC drop/add dates not be published on msvcc.org. Jason Pugh agreed to look into policy for publishing drop/add information on msvcc.org. 5. Jason Pugh said that the drop/add policy was open consortium wide. The bottom line is deciding what works best for each school. 6. The association agreed that a 5 day drop/add period during the spring and fall semesters and a 2 day drop/add period during the summer semester would work best for the MSVCC. a. Jason Pugh will submit this idea to the Dean’s Association. Jason Pugh, SBCJC, announced that the President’s Association has given him the task of organizing the review of new learning management systems (LMS’s). ii. The association was given the task of reviewing three to four LMS’s and choosing two LMS’s for operational testing consideration. Mr. Pugh will then secure quotes from the vendors for a 12 month licensing agreement. The new contract will begin January, 2004. iii. The goal is to test the new software for 12 months with 1000 users. Both the BB LMS and the evaluation LMS will be run in a parallel configuration during this evaluation phase. No decision was made as to which courses would be taught using the test LMS. Mr. Smith volunteered to move his courses to the test LMS for the Spring 2004 semester. iv. Mr. Pugh said the President’s Association wishes for Mississippi to become a dual online platform state. This will prevent the dependence upon one company during problem times such as the current semester. v. After 6-9 months of new the licensing contract the association will make a decision for training of instructors. (Susan, I do not understand this statement??) vi. Mark Smith suggested contacting individual school technology directors to give forewarning of potential platform additions. vii. A new Blackboard contract will be signed for January, 2004-December, 2004. MSVCC will receive a $12,000 discount for the new contract due to the numerous problems encountered during the recent migration to BB 6. John Baker, founder, president, and CEO of Desire2Learn, gave a very informative demonstration of the Desire2Learn course software platform. 1. Mr. Pugh announced that this platform came very highly recommended by the SREB. 2. Many nice features included in the D2L platform include: a. A learning object repository b. The ability to use a discussion board across many courses

e. SBCJS LMS Tasking i.

f.

LMS demonstrations i.

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