Faculty Meeting, December 12, 2002

Attendance: Adams, Barfield, Boucias, Buss, Butler, Choate, Cuda, Coon, Foltz, Frank, G. Hall, Koehler, Leppla, Liburd, Lloyd, Lawrence, Maruniak, McSorley, F. Oi, Walker, Yu. Students: Baldwin and Tucker.

Meeting opened at 10:30 am by Dr. John Capinera. Dr. Capinera introduced Dr. E. Jane Luzar, Associate Dean, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

Dr. Luzar passed out Distance Education catalogs and a "hand-out" entitled "IFAS Distance Education". You may get the same information by entering "http://disted.ifas.ufl.edu/" on your browser. Dr. Luzar is the college administrator of the new graduate distance education program and the existing statewide undergraduate program. There has also been appointed an Associate Provost of Distance Education at the university level.

Distance education is being refocused to include out-of-state graduate programs. These out-of-state programs will consist of group of courses acceptable for a certificate, minor or M.S. degree. Enrollment of students, both domestic and international, in these courses will be admitted to UF as Non-degree or Postbac status. The courses created for these programs will be called "off-book" courses. This means the faculty will not get workload credit for teaching the course but the charge to students for the course will come to the faculty and/or department to manage as the department sees fit. CALS has a credit card system in place to accept funds for off-book course charges directly from student and transfer the funds to the department. These charges will not go through the university tuition system, which means the department may charge in-state fees to out-of-state and/or international students. In-state registration will be handled in a traditional manner Students may start out to earn a certificate, minor or degree or transfer up to 15 credits at a later date to a graduate degree (by petition, see page 24 Graduate Catalog 2002-2003).

Faculty is encouraged to create off-book courses and a curriculum program for a minor, certificate and/or M.S. degree. Soil and Water Science will begin their program January 2003. The current favorite medium for offering distance education course is "CD" and interactive web-based courses. Video conferencing courses are very expensive therefore those courses are being changed to Poly-Com, which will be tested by the Apopka REC this spring. Video Conferencing and Poly-Com courses must be delivered at an REC . This makes that form of instruction ineffective for off-book courses.

The College is asking us to look at the "bigger" picture of distance education. This department currently has history and statewide presence. Personnel at IFAS Communications have a support system in place to help faculty with "Distance Education Course Development. The suggested timeline for development is one year. There is a CD called "Virtual Swamp" available through IFAS that provides instruction and promotes motivation for students preparing to take distance education coursework.

Rebecca Baldwin demonstrated ENY3005 Principles of Entomology web-course established by Dr. John Zenger. The course is delivered through Web-CT and requires a lab for on-campus students and students at the REC's across the state. This course is continuing to grow and is at 100% enrollment for all sections in the spring 2003 semester. Rebecca stated that using Web-Ct is self-explanatory and user friendly. She also told faculty that Lisa Hightower and Doug Johnson at IFAS Communications provide great support system to instructors of web courses.

Skip Choate discussed how PC Use in Agriculture (ALS3203) developed into an on-line course. This course is offered to on-campus, statewide and out-of-state students via the Internet each spring and fall semester. The entire course is on-line including exams, exercises, and quizzes. Email and class list-serv is used to answer student questions. Enrollment is now up to 52. Skip recommends the on-line presentation of courses and says they should not intimidate faculty. The communication between student and Instructor during the course promotes learning on both sides.

A large amount of initial effort is involved in getting material online. If your course content does not change much from semester to semester, the amount of work significantly diminishes.

Dr. Capinera announced that a committee to participate in the off-book distance education program would be created at the next faculty meeting.

Meeting adjourned at 12:00 pm.