President's Notes

MPC Academic Senate April Meetings:

Budget Advisory Committee

College Council -- Met 26

Received the "other half" of the five-year summary of fund balances and transfers, this one including the self-insurance fund. Shows the self insurance fund, which includes OPEB (Other post-employment benefits) and Workers Compensation, as declining in value from $10.5M at year-end FY10/11 to $7.5M year-end FY 13/14 and $5.3M at budgeted year-end FY 14/15. A of this writing, I do not have an electronic copy of this document.

AAAG -- May 27

Endorsed the purchase of Trac-Dat contingent on College Council identifying appropriate funds to allocate for this purpose.

Committee on Committees

Distance Education

The Chancellor's Office Online Education Initiative (OEI) has selected Canvas as the class management software. MPC currently uses Moodle for this purpose and has a contract to use it until June 2017. All colleges will have the optional opportunity to obtain Canvas and use it as their class management software at zero or heavily subsidized costs.

MPC will need to make a decision on whether to switch or not. If MPC does switch, there will be a cross-over period where we have both systems and people have a lot of time to make the switch. Everything we have in place will remain in place until we decide otherwise. This should be a faculty-driven conversation and should take place in Fall 2015. An outcome of this conversation would be a list of pros and cons for switching and not switching. 

• The question: How should MPC make this decision?

• Proposal: let the Institutional Committee on Distance Education (ICDE) make this decision and then inform the Academic Senate with a recommendation.

MPC Plagiarism and Cheating Policy (page 22 in the current Catalog)

I inquired about using the BART system for plagiarism reporting.

BART System: www.mpc.edu/student-services/related-links/bart-advocate-incident-reporting-faculty-staff-only

 From Larry Walker:

I think the BART-Advocate Incident Reporting system is an excellent way to systematically report and track plagiarism and I fully support such a process. Amy and I already discussed the best way to incorporate the issue of plagiarism into our existing reporting process.

Take care,

Larry

From Amy Cavender:

When a new report is entered, a notification goes to Christine Vincent, Lara Shipley, Larry Walker, Amy Cavender, Security, and Brian Streetman 

Amy also provided a series of screen shots showing what the Office of Student Services sees on their side once a report is submitted:

www.mpcfaculty.net/senate/Plagiarism/BART-PlagiarismReportExample.pdf  

I then asked Amy Caveneder a series of questions about the report that the Office of Student Services sees and what they do with it. Here are the questions and her replies:  

1.  On page 3, you write, “I review the report and notify the VP of the report, and whether or not the instructor has requested action.” Where is the official place that the instructor is supposed to request action, or specifically indicate that the instructor feels that no further action is needed? Should this be in the “Incident Description” box? This is where I wrote this information, so I’m assuming that’s correct. If so…

• Answer: There is a section titled “Action taken by public reporter” That would be the appropriate place to enter information regarding what action is needed or has been taken. The information will also be received if it is noted in the “Incident Description” Box. Either one is appropriate.

2.  Is this system customizable in any way that would allow a prompt that asks something like, “recommendation on further action (if any).” Or, could that “Incident Description” prompt be edited to say something like, “please include recommendations for further action”?

• Answer: I believe that the system is customizable to do this, however, I think the “Action taken by public Reporter” section is sufficient. Each circumstance is so unique when information is reported, it’s hard to have all the information fit into boxes. Typically the reporting parties do a phenomenal job of reporting exactly what happened, and what action has been taken, or needs to be taken.

3. On that same page 3, I see a grayed out heading that says “Academic Integrity”. What’s that for? Should this plagiarism stuff come under that heading?

• Answer: “Academic Integrity” simply is a header that isn’t used for any fields of information, Advocate has a wide range of abilities, that aren’t relevant to MPC. If I had to guess, I would say that this section would allow another system (maybe an ERP) to automatically enter the student’s status in that field, such as, on progress Probation, having a disciplinary hold, or Academic Dismissal.  

4.  Is there a webpage that provides instructions for filling out this BART form? If so, could we edit it to include information on using this system for plagiarism issues.

• Answer: No instructions that I know of =) Staff seem to be able to complete reports with ease.

Amy

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