Policies and Guidelines for Coordinating Distance Education Classes

Transcription

1 Policies and Guidelines for Coordinating Distance Education Classes University of Colorado Denver/ AMC Educational Support Services Policy DRAFT Date: Effective date: Responsibilities of the College of Nursing: Will be responsible for enrollment and coordination of classes with the AHEC sites o This includes contacting the AHECs to identify the dates and times for each class (A list of all of the AHEC and other distance sites for Nursing Classes, their location and contact information is attached.) o Letting the AHEC sites know how many students will attend each class Will be responsible for communicating to the students what the ground rules are for using CMAD (Converged Management Application (CMA ) Desktop) versus attending at an AHEC site o If they live within the 7 county metropolitan area (Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Boulder, Denver, Douglas, and Jefferson) or within a 1.5 hour drive of the Anschutz Medical Campus, or live outside the Denver area and within 1.5 hours drive of an AHEC or a designated ITV site (e.g. UCCS campus, Montrose) they must drive there to take their class by ITV. They will be expected to attend class at an AHEC site to minimize the number of ports required for each class on the UCD bridge. o Students need to be notified that ESS cannot guarantee connectivity from their homes. Everyone has different internet service and ESS had no control over the bandwidth or services provided to the individual s home. o Must advise students that in the event that they cannot connect or receive a stream, the student will need to watch the Panopto recording. Will be responsible to inform CON faculty of these guidelines/policies to avoid having any other faculty approve arrangements outside of the established guidelines. Will need to inform ESS and AHEC when times of classes are changed or when a class is cancelled. CU CON Faculty will be asked to assist with this effort. Will be responsible to inform both the AHECs and ESS when students drop and add the classes Faculty teaching the classes are responsible for recording the class on Panopto. Due to limited bridging resources, each class will be limited to a total of 10 ports (i.e., 2 AHEC sites and 8 CMAD connections, or 3 AHEC sites and 7 CMAD (Converged Management Application (CMA ) Desktop ) connections, etc.. There are other conferences running simultaneously for other schools and programs, and this allocates about one-third of the bridge to each class. This is particularly difficult on days when there are simultaneous nursing classes running which are all using multiple ports.

2 Responsibilities of the Nursing Students: If students live within the 7 county metropolitan area (Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Boulder, Denver, Douglas, and Jefferson) or within a 1.5 hour drive of the Anschutz Medical Campus, or live outside the Denver area and within 1.5 hours drive of an AHEC or a designated ITV site (e.g. UCCS campus, Montrose) they must drive there to take their class by ITV. They will be expected to attend class at an AHEC or designated ITV site to minimize the number of ports required for each class on the UCD bridge. If students live outside of the defined areas above, they will be responsible to contact ESS ( ) to work with Network Engineers to download CMAD software and VPN software no less than three weeks prior to the start of classes Must address VPN access issues with the IT Services Helpdesk ( ) to resolve any VPN problems. Once provided the instructions for VPN access and software download, must complete that process and contact ESS to run the test for the CMAD connections no less than two weeks prior to the start of classes Must understand that ESS will work with them to assist with the downloading of the CMAD software and testing of connections, but that ESS cannot guarantee that their computers will operate as required, or that ESS can resolve internet service issues to their homes. Must understand that ESS can provide access to connectivity, but cannot guarantee it. Will be responsible to contact ESS and CON Graduate Programs Advisor (Dr. Judy Campbell) if they have emergencies that prevent them from attending class at the AHEC and may need a web stream for that particular date (We will not be able to support emergency implementation of CMAD access.) Must notify the AHECs and Judy Campbell of when they will not attend for purposes of presentation, clinical obligations, etc. (The AHEC sites provide staffing for these classes at no charge to the College of Nursing. When they assign staff and no one shows, this is an abuse of their time and resources and it also prevents them from using their facilities for other events.) In the event the student cannot connect via CMAD or receive a stream, the student will need to watch the Panopto recording and be responsible to direct any questions to the instructor.

3 Responsibilities of the Nursing Students (continued): MUST FOLLOW VIDEOCONFERENCING ETIQUETTE FROM HOME: o Once they have made the connection for each class session, the student will need to mute their microphone (mic) on CMAD and only open the mic when they need to communicate, and then mute again. o Be attentive to the background noise that may occur in the surroundings (i.e., phones ringing, dogs barking, children making noise, etc.) This is disruptive to the class for all of the other students and detracts from the educational content. o MUST NOT HAVE A CELL PHONE in close proximity to their computer or must turn the cell phone off (not just silence it). Cell phones can and often do interfere with the internet connections for everyone and create a static sounding beeping noise that can disrupt the audio communications for everyone. If you must leave your phone on please leave it in a different room away from the computer you are using to participate in your class. o Must be able to set the audio settings on their computers to insure that they can be heard in the classroom. ESS is not able to trouble shoot audio settings on an individual student s computer (The student should have the instruction manual for their respective computer and be able to adjust their own settings. o At the time of connection, the student needs to adjust their camera to set a view of themselves that will allow the instructor and class to view them, but not be too close for the comfort of the student. Ongoing camera adjustments by individual students are very distracting for the class.

4 Responsibilities of Educational Support Services: Will be responsible to work with the College of Nursing to schedule the necessary videoconferencing connections for the AMC classrooms, AHEC sites, and students connecting by CMAD Will provide instructions to the students who have been approved to connect by CMAD to provision for the download of CMAD and VPN software (See attached instructions.) Will work with the students who have been approved to connect by CMAD to run test connections with those students to verify their connectivity two weeks prior to the start of classes. (ESS cannot guarantee that every individual computer meets the specification as there are too many variables, but will provide current information about the minimum computer configuration/specifications to run CMAD based on Polycom s recommendations.) (See attached specifications.) Will work with the students to resolve (to the best of our ability) any logistical problems with the CMAD interactions, but cannot guarantee that we can resolve specific problems arising from malfunction of individual computer webcams, microphones, anti-virus software, routers, etc. Will be responsible to insure that the connections are made with the AHEC sites and students one-half hour prior to the start of each class. Students will need to be informed that they must initiate their connections via CMAD 30 minutes before each class (absolutely no less than 15 minutes before class). With numerous students connecting for each class, ESS cannot work with multiple students to resolve any connectivity problems, if they don t attempt to connect until 5 minutes before the class begins. Will provide and maintain the network circuits and videoconferencing equipment at each AHEC site to ensure that distance classes can be delivered to these sites.

5 Responsibilities of the AHEC Sites: Will work with the College of Nursing and other UCD schools to provide access to their facilities and staffing for distance classes in exchange for the placement of videoconferencing equipment and network circuits provided by ESS for this purpose. (However, they are independent 501C-3 organizations and do need to be able to conduct business in support of their own missions and we need to be respectful of the use of their resources.) Will be responsible to have their videoconferencing equipment turned on at 30 minutes prior to the start of class. Will be available to provide technical support for the students attending classes in their locations on a scheduled basis. Will notify ESS and the College of Nursing if any technical problems occur that prevent connectivity to the UCD for distribution of classes. (ESS will be responsible to expedite the resolution of any technical problems and will provide web streams of classes to those students until the technical problems are resolve. ESS will keep the College of Nursing and the respective AHECs updated as to the progress of resolution.) AHEC sites will be asked to provide phone back up in the event that the ITV connections fail. This policy is effective January 1, 2012.