Academic Council Notes & Work Papers

Notes - February 18, 2003

Members Present: Linda Brannon, Patricia Butler, Theresa Carroll, Gilbert Castro, Cynthia Chappell, Ronald Johnson, Phil Pierpont, Semilla Rivera, Leslie Roeder, Gary Rosenfeld, James Turley, Jon Wiener

Members Not Present: Henry W Strobel, Margaret C McNeese Guests: Vahn Lewis, Jeanette Adams-McNeill, Rick Miller, Lois Monroe, Diane Novy, John McMahon, William Weems

The Chair, Dr. Gilbert Castro, opened the first meeting of the Academic Council by providing an explanation of the new council governance system adopted by the UT-Houston administration. He stated that this Council will assist decision making related to Academic Affairs issues. The five Councils are the Academic Council, the Research Council, the Clinical Council, the Institutional Relations Council, and the Administrative Council. There will be a number of supporting committees and councils for each of the major councils. The Planning Office will post the Council structure and membership on the web once the process is formalized. He stated that this council structure will allow better representation from all levels within the institution.

Dr. Castro stated that the charge of the Academic Council is to help executive administration make decisions relative to academic issues. He also said that some issues that arise can be resolved with the advice of the Council, other issues may result in recommendations to the Executive Council. He said that the Council will not meet if there are no issues to discuss; otherwise, it would meet monthly. Various other individuals in the schools would be invited to the meetings depending on the academic issues brought to the Council. He said that the Council may meet once a month, but if there are no major issues, the Council will not meet. Potential agenda items should be submitted to Dr. Castro's office. He commented that when the Council does meet, it should look at common issues of the six schools. The Council will then develop a recommendation to carry to the Executive Council. Dr. Castro commented that experts would be invited to the meetings to provide their expertise related to the issues.

One of the issues related to distance learning and the use of Blackboard was addressed by Dr. Dianne Novy. She provided some background for discussion related to a course on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Pain Management that was recently developed by Drs. Jeanette Adams-McNeill, Dianne Novy and Vahn Lewis. Lectures were posted on Blackboard. The course was offered in Fall 2002 and primarily Medical Students were enrolled. She noted that the course was successful and would be offered again the Spring. Several problems have arisen that include interdisciplinary problems, on-line problems, and challenges with approvals, beyond getting the Medical School and School of Nursing curriculum committees' approvals. Other schools have not been approached since their faculty is not involved at this time. She noted that there is no formalized mechanism for interaction or for calculating the work done in the interdisciplinary part of the course.

Dr. McNeill commented that they would like to form an advisory committee for the course to bring in outside people with different knowledge. In addition, they would like to provide multiple types of C.E. credit rather than academic credit. There is also the desire to take the course internationally by distance education.

One of the major issues has been registration because of differing schedules in the different schools. She said that a more uniform process needs to be developed because the schools have different ways of grading, different criteria, and varying costs. Other issues included difficulty with Blackboard access and parking.

One of the problems with Blackboard was related to obtaining guest accounts on Blackboard for Medical Students who added the course after starting the year and for students auditing the course. Dr. Adams-McNeill said that obtaining the guest accounts was possible, but very awkward.

She made some suggestions for alleviating some of the problems. They included:

Funding for a Coordinator
Creation of an Interdisciplinary Campus to house these types of courses

Dr. Castro commented that the solutions that UTHSC-H develops should be as simple and efficient as possible as well as consistent with the standards of the schools. He asked Mr. Rick Miller and Dr. William Weems to address the issues with Blackboard. Mr. Miller said that, because of security and compliance issues, there should be a registration process. He commented that the HSC process catches students when they have paid and noted that the extract could be run nightly rather than weekly to catch students sooner. Individuals outside our system are given guest accounts, which give them access to the Medical Center library, Blackboard and the network as well as an email account. Because of these things, verification of identification is required. Any variance with requested access to Blackboard gets complicated. He noted that faculty or staff may assume responsibility for the individuals who register for Blackboard and Academic Computing will give them access to the UTHSC-H network. That individual will, of course, have to have identification in order to get a digital ID.

Dr. Weems stated that these issues, which are facing every university in the country, are being looked at by the Internet II Group to work through them. He said that all UT faculty, staff and students, who are in the system, have access to Blackboard; the problems begin when individuals outside UT take on-line courses. He commented that nursing students at UTEP who take nursing courses via Blackboard must be verified by designated staff or faculty at that location. The plan for the future is for UTEP to be able to verify students who are in their system.

In addressing privacy issues, he stated that in the case of continuing education courses that are certified, enrollees are probably not students as defined by federal law and privacy is a different issue. FERPA guidelines for students must be adhered to and faculty cannot legally see the roster of students in other courses. He noted that a secondary Blackboard system or another system may be necessary for continuing education. It was noted that individuals in other countries cannot be given access to Blackboard because they cannot be verified.

Dr. Weems reported that three of the UT System components were recently audited for security. The health components, because of HIPPA, have more requirements are more secure. He noted that UT is working making things available to everyone electronically, but trying to do that in a secure way. He said that policies will have to be developed to address these security issues.

Lois Monroe presented the following comments:

Students from other institutions who register for a course are listed as non-degree seeking students.
Medical School students are listed in a different term than that in which the course is listed and that might be the cause of the problem with Blackboard.
Blackboard does not interface with Web Faculty at this time.

It was noted that students are often confused about which password to use, especially the students at the School of Public Health. Dr. Weems said that Academic Computing is working very hard to reduce the number of user ids and passwords that will go across systems. He noted that it takes time.

Another possibility posed by Dr. Weems was a list of enrolled students being provided to Academic Computing and Network Services to monitor for students who have dropped so that they can be dropped from the system quickly. Lois Monroe commented that students are dropped on the 21st class day if they have not paid, so there is a timing issue. Lists will be different because of early registration, late registration, etc. Dr. Weems said that after the 21st class day, students should drop off the list of those with network access.

There was discussion about teaching courses face-to-face versus teaching on-line and it was noted that modes of teaching are changing and UT needs to be able to follow suit. Lois explained concurrent enrollment agreements with University of Houston and other public universities and interinstitutional agreements with Rice, Baylor and other private institutions.

The interinstitutional agreement allows students from each university to take courses at the other concurrently. Students taking courses at UT and enrolled at Rice or Baylor pay tuition and fees at their home institution and the courses appear on their transcript. These students are not counted or reported as UTHSC-H students. A UTHSC-H student who takes a course at Baylor or Rice pays tuition and fees here and the grade appears on our transcript. The number of hours is limited.
A concurrent enrollment agreement allows a student to register at two campuses. We admit those students as non-degree seeking students and charge them only for the hours they are taking here. The other university charges them for the hours they are taking there. The student’s grade appears on the transcript of the institution providing the course.

Dr. Chappell noted that the School of Public Health and Baylor cross list courses and have students attending classes at the other institution, but they are registered with their university. She noted that the number of these students has increased and will continue to increase.

Dr. Castro advised Drs. Adams-McNeill to work directly with Academic Computing and the Registrar to work out specific issues related to their interdisciplinary course. He also said that he hoped these conversations would lead to the development of relevant policies and guidelines. He commented that using our technology for education is a high priority issue for Academic Affairs. He suggested a follow-up of this issue at the next meeting.

There was a question about people physically auditing classes and their access. It was noted that they are given a guest account and they pay auditing fees, IT fees and other fees relating to the school.

It was proposed that UTHSC-H should have an interdisciplinary school or campus, which could be a virtual campus that would have one fee, one schedule, etc. It was noted that UT has four courses: (1) Frontiers in Interdisciplinary Health Care, (2) Dr. Reiser's ethics course, (3) Interdisciplinary Gerontology Team Training Clinical, and (4) Interdisciplinary Approaches to Pain Management. Dr. Castro responded by saying the Council should investigate the market for such a campus. It was also suggested that the Council should look at accountability of interdisciplinary course as well as the broad range of students who might be attracted to taking this type of course. It will be necessary for UT to show that the interdisciplinary courses meet the standards set by our accreditation agency.

Dr. Castro asked that any future agenda items or comments/questions be sent to him and if a similar time is convenient for future meetings. There were no negative comments about the time for future meetings.