MELA Meeting Minutes 2003 - 2017

IV. Approval of November 2013 Minutes. Keri Cole made the motion to accept minutes; Chris Square seconded the motion. Motion carried.

V.

Unfinished Business

a. Retention Vendors

i. Audra presented a follow up from the Vender Demonstration at Hinds in December. Three vendors (GradesFirst, DropGuard, AspireEDU) were present at the demonstration. It was consensus that no one was interested in GradesFirst unless it was pursued on an individual college basis. DropGuard is much more reliant on instructor’s initiating a ‘red flag’; however, AspireEDU doesn’t require instructor initiating a ‘red flag’ and does it for you. ii. Holmes CC has agreed to a 3-week pilot for the AspireEDU product, so we can see true data with reports. Holmes CC will give feedback to the group after the pilot (hopefully at the February meeting). iii. Keri mentioned that AspireEDU was looking to add an attendance piece to their product that would look at Canvas Roll Call data. Some of the AspireEDU retention formula is based on students’ turning in work, so the data from the attendance feature in Canvas is needed. iv. Tish mentioned that she is going to be contacting someone from Richland Community College (a contact that Canvas provided) who uses the AspireEDU product currently. This will allow Holmes CC to know about potential problems before meeting with the AspireEDU sales representatives. v. AspireEDU is what we would want to purchase as a consortium, if the pilot goes well and the group agrees. DropGuard will not be considered as a consortium purchase. b. Mini-Terms i. Audra reviewed the “Recommendations from the ELCA Work Session” that took place on December 12, 2013. Audra e-mailed out the notes from the work session to all in the eLearning Coordinators Association distribution list. 1. What came out of the meeting is that we would keep the 16-week and 8-week terms that we already have, but add additional 4-week terms. right to fill local offerings before offering the same course from another institution. Each college must publish their MSVCC testing schedule on the MSVCC website). ii. The business rules must be established quickly so Ive can start working on building the ET. iii. The business rules of how mini-terms will work will be presented to the Steering Committee (three colleges who represent Financial Aid, Business Office, etc.), then Academic Officers (first of February), and then Presidents (end of February) for an approval vote. iv. A new policy was recommended as an addition to page 2 of the ‘Mini-Term Recommendations from ELCA Work Session”. This policy will be e-mailed out to the group for a vote. 2. Policy Changes were read aloud. (i.e. -- Each college will determine the term offerings that will be included in their master schedule. Each college has the

1. Recommended Policy: “Each college is responsible for providing proctoring services for the courses hosted or provided for the duration of the course term.”

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