Instructional Technology and Distance Education Annual Report 2020-2021

New annual report published during the summer. You may review it at: 2020-2021 Annual Report

Echo360 Usage Overview

The following data is for the first month's usage for the Fall semester from 2018 - 2021. As you can see, 2020 was higher than previous years and this year, but we need to take the circumstances that we were in into mind. All classes were virtual and faculty were being advised to always record. In further analyzing the data, and removing the 2020 outlier year, there has been a 288% increase of recordings. The number of unique faculty almost doubled and the number of unique students more than doubled.

As a reminder, Echo360 is installed in every classroom computer with the capability to automatically record during the specified class dates and times. Echo 360 can also be installed in faculty's computers for recording of their lectures in their offices or at home. Faculty can choose whether and when to share or not to share these recorded lectures with students. These recordings can be kept in their own Echo360 library and can be shared with students that were absent or as a review before a test.

The Masters of Science in School Counseling launched in the accelerated online format in Fall 2021. Currently, there are 17 students registered for the program.

Two concentrations were added to the Masters of Business Administration program:

• Healthcare Administration (17 students registered)
• Criminal Justice (6 students registered)

There are 1,487 graduates students enrolled this semester. Of those, 956 students are pursuing an online graduate degree.

Four short learning, non-credit bearing courses in the health care area were launched through Continuing Ed. They are open to anyone interested in the content and do not require a Bachelor's degree. For more information, go to: https://online.tamiu.edu/professional-certificates-courses/

These programs offer professional certificates in:

• Management and Leadership in Healthcare
• Developing a Business Plan for Healthcare
• Foundations of Healthcare Reimbursement and Billing
• Adult/Adolescent Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (CA-SANE) Didactic Course for the State of Texas.

The eLearning Team continues to assist faculty through the QM course development process for courses being taught online. For an overview of the course development process, visit our Development Process of Distance Education Courses page.

Since the last DEITC meeting in May 2021, there have been 19 more courses that have been QM certified.

There are 319 online course sections for Fall 2021. Out of those there are 178 unique faculty members.

• Of those, 170 (95%) have completed or are registered for a QM training
• 8 (4.49%) have not completed a QM workshop

If anyone is interested in taking the Peer Reviewer QM workshop, please contact the eLearning team for a list of upcoming dates available.

QM review rate will increase from $1,000 to $1,300 in December 2021. This topic will be discussed in next DEITC meeting in order for the committee to provide suggestions on how to minimize the impact of the increase.

Plagiarism Prevention and Academic Integrity Update

To summarize some actions taken on this task:

• the eLearning team has added the TAMIU Honor Pledge in a fixed module above the Blackboard courses in the landing page of Blackboard
• the eLearning team has updated the syllabus and policies acknowledgement forum in the course shells to include the Honor Code video provided by the SCCE department
• graduate school has included a module on Academic Integrity using the Infobase Learning Cloud videos (formerly Hoonuit) in their graduate online orientation, and
• University College updated their curriculum and included this topic which is offered to freshmen. ACE will be providing workshops on academic integrity and will be posted to the website..

Per last meeting in May 2021, the committee recommended the use of the Infobase Learning Cloud or Credo (Library) videos, to be implemented in their courses to promote academic integrity and plagiarism prevention among their students. Unfortunately, there hasn't been much traction with the video modules. As a reminder, Dr. Mitchell had previously mentioned that he is not making these mandatory modules, he is instead, highly encouraging them. If used, faculty will decide to use these video modules for credit or no credit.

Next actions to encourage faculty to use them and integrate them in their courses to increase usage for the Spring 2022:

• P.R.O.F. Center is offering a session on plagiarism prevention strategies to reinforce academic integrity among students on Friday, October 1st.
• Pop-up reminders on Blackboard informing faculty about the video modules available.
• Integrating Credo video modules into Blackboard (LTI) for seamless connections with Blackboard grade book.
• Adding a menu link in the course templates with the Academic Integrity video module from Infobase Learning Cloud. The integration is already in place between Infobase Learning Cloud and Blackboard/Blackboard grade book.

Feedback Fruits Pilot

TAMIU piloted two of the 10 products that Feedback Fruits offers. Thirteen faculty were using the pilot. On June 15th the committee was asked to review the report from the company and were asked to make recommendations to either terminate, extend or implement Feedback Fruits. The six that responded recommended to extend the pilot. The pilot program is $24,000 for one more year. Mr. Munoa supported the cost of the program as long as the $24,000 was divided among the colleges or another source of funding was identified. Since this review took place in the summer and departments were already working on their budgets, it was not feasible at that time to find the funding for the pilot. Dr. Hong from University College has also been trying to find funding, but as of now no funding has been identified. We are still in good relations with the company and they are willing to come in and do trainings on Feedback Fruits for the University in the event the pilot is extended or implemented.

If the committee or faculty have any suggestions for funding the Feedback Fruits pilot, please let us know. This software is very useful and fills in the gap in a lot of things where Blackboard is not able to do so.

National Distance Learning Week

National Distance Learning Week takes place this year during the week of November 8th - 12th. eLearning at TAMIU has been celebrating this event since 2009. We prepare a series of sessions throughout the week. These sessions will primarily be virtual this time but maybe we will try a couple of face-to-face. In the past, we have offered a $150 stipend for faculty that submit a presentation proposal. The committee approved offering faculty a stipend for Learning Technologies Week (LTW). The call for proposals will go out on Friday, October 8th.

Open Agenda

• Two Open Education Resources (OER) virtual workshops are being offered to faculty by the library (Elizabeth DeZouche and Ben Rawlins). First one on September 28, 11:00 am - 12:00 pm and the other on October 26, 2:00 - 3:00 pm.
• Digital textbook (Books IncludED) deadline to submit adoptions for the spring is coming up. Reminder that Top Hat fee is included in this initiative. Top Hat can be used for attendance, presentations, and OER textbook material.
• Dr. Ramirez mentioned that the National Association of System Heads (NASH) offered a grant to the Texas A&M University System to provide professional development for faculty to promote effective teaching practices. Last year, A&M adopted the initiative. The Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) is the training entity that is providing the professional development. Ten faculty from TAMIU completed the "Effective Teaching Practices" (25 week course) this past year. The program is aligned with QM. This year's cohort includes 18 faculty and are in the 3rd week of the program. ACUE is also offering a micro-credential, 8 week online course: "Inclusive Teaching for Equitable Learning." There are 34 faculty currently enrolled in this program. Since the programs have been very successful, the A&M system has created university system-wide cohorts. For the spring semester, there is a counterpart program to the to the 25 week course. There are 4 micro-credentials (6 week courses) that faculty can take part in lieu to the 25 week course.
• The Budget Advisory Council (BAC) approved two full-time Instructional Designer III positions. The postings will be up this week.