On April 30, 2021, American River College held a Zoom event to discuss instructional delivery. Read some of the main points of discussion or watch a video recap with additional information from the event.
Educational Master Plan
The Educational Master Plan was created to look into the future, and address accessibility to course materials.
Faculty Questions for Instructional Delivery
Currently ARC is working towards offering more courses on campus.
Faculty Concern(s)
- Faculty and staff do not want to lose touch with the students with the most severe needs (ESL, DI Population, and so on)
- Faculty and staff want to assure that ARC is meeting the needs of students, getting students back into seats on campus, and tapping in with professors to understand the needs of students.
- Classroom experience needs to be more interactive, besides just a recorded video or receiving assignments.
Currently, there is not a way for ARC to change online course options from asynchronous or synchronous. When a student chooses a course, there is no way for the student to select asynchronous or synchronous; the course "type" is automatically chosen.
There is no way to offer "hybrid" courses; courses where the students have the option to attend online and/or on-ground courses (i.e. a student can choose – if they are ill or unavailable to attend on-ground courses, the option to still Zoom into live on-ground courses and still attend the on-campus courses when able).
Faculty Recommendation
- By offering the "hybrid" courses, students still feel connected to on-campus courses and can automatically join the on-ground courses once they are able to attend on campus.
Faculty Recommendations
- Make sure to explain what "type" of courses more descriptively. Students are having a hard time processing and trying to understand what the course definitions mean (Zoom, On-Ground, etc.).
- Ensure students understand the implications of their class options, definitions of asynchronous or synchronous courses.
- There needs to be a definition associated with course types, further defining asynchronous or synchronous, and/or hybrid (redefined).
ARC is currently finalizing construction on the six HomeBases buildings on campus.
- ARC needs to continue VM ware to translate in homes; provide software similar to what we are teaching on campus.
- Auto-cliff notes: students can go back and listen to recording of the class.
- This software can help students who have missed courses.
- Auto-cliff notes: students can go back and listen to recording of the class.
- Zoom sessions to remain in place.
- ARC can take advantage of technology to meet students where they are.
- Pre-recorded Zoom sessions: Faculty wants to hold on to prerecorded demo Zoom sessions/ Instructional Videos as an archive, students can reference at any time to still receive classroom hours (course credit).
- Business and Computer Science: virtualized the computer lab.
- How do we continue to provide the virtual computer lab remotely?
- History Department: Course Size Cap
- Class sizes need to change; currently there are 45 students in a History course at ARC (45 students is the course capacity).
- Classroom spaces are small, and classes are highly impacted with students.
- Sac City and Folsom Lake cap their History courses at 40 students
- Less students in class, give the professor an opportunity to give more individualized attention.
- Sac City and Folsom Lake cap their History courses at 40 students
- Classroom spaces are small, and classes are highly impacted with students.
- Class sizes need to change; currently there are 45 students in a History course at ARC (45 students is the course capacity).
- Potential of a class fusion of students in on-ground classes and students accessing through Zoom synchronously.
- Retaining Chromebooks for students and hotspots on- and off-campus.
- Ensuring ARC students can continue to have access to Chromebooks and hotspots on- and off-campus.
- Clarification to students to understand how to navigate the campus resources.
- More staff trained on ground to walk students through processes at ARC (financial aid, department buildings, cultural centers, etc.).
- Students are confused on how to find resources (faculty, staff, and resources at ARC).
- More clarity from ARC counselors of course schedules that follow the career path of the student.