Approval of minutes. The minutes for the meetings of April 11 and April 18, 2007 were approved as amended.

Remarks by the Secretary. Professor Das suggested finalizing Council's response to the Bagger committee's report today. She said the Administration and Bylaws committee has worked extremely hard and she is thankful for that.

Dean Falk assumed the chair.

It was reported that the following appointments were approved by the Appointments and Promotions subcommittee: 1) Dr. Emma Cervone as Assistant Professor in Anthropology effective 7/1/07. 2) Mr. Leon Wieseltier as Crane Foundation Distinguished Visiting Professor in History for 9/1/07 - 5/31/08. 3) Mr. Michael Sullivan as Visiting Assistant Professor in Classics for 7/1/07 - 6/30/08. 4) Mr. Steven Snell as Lecturer in Political Science for 9/1/07 - 12/31/07. 5) Ms. Lucy Bucknell as Senior Lecturer in Film & Media Studies in English for 7/1/07 - 6/30/08.

Remarks by the Deans. Dean Falk reported that Professor Michael Williams, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy, was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Professor Peter Olson in Earth and Planetary Sciences was elected to the National Academy of Science.

The promotion of Dr. Michael Yu to Associate Professor, without tenure, in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, effective July 1, 2007 was approved.

The Council turned to discussion of on-line education. Dean Falk said that this agenda item came out of the discussion in the Academic Affairs subcommittee about some proposals under consideration. The subcommittee was concerned that there should be some clear standards about how the effectiveness of online education is judged. Dean Falk said he thought it would be most productive to have a larger conversation including the existing policies in both Advanced Academic programs in the Krieger School and Engineering Programs for Professionals in the Whiting School. He wanted to bring in Dean Sarah Steinberg, Advanced Academic programs (AAP) and Dean Allan Bjerkaas, Engineering Programs for Professionals (EPP) to talk about this. What Dean Falk hopes will come out of this is that Council will decide how to direct the subcommittees on what kind of criteria to use when considering the actual proposals. The proposals under consideration were included in Council's materials for this meeting.

Dean Sarah Steinberg, AAP and Dean Allan Bjerkaas, EPP joined the meeting at 5:21 p.m. Dean Steinberg said that she has been at Hopkins since 1993 and was in the School of Engineering until 2004. She has worked very closely with Dean Bjerkaas. They are pleased that online education is a topic of discussion because it is very important to part-time programs. They sent two packets of information for Council - one is the online course standards. This document was adopted collectively by the two schools when the first fully online degree in bioinformatics was put forth. They decided that students were not going to be distinguishing between Arts and Sciences and Engineering. They needed to see the same standard of delivery. Arts and Sciences adopted Engineering's standards. AAP realized that they wanted a better description of the responsibilities of the many people involved. There are trainers and technical people who work with the faculty. They use e-live which is a mechanism for speaking and working together on a document in real time. Interaction and communication are important issues. Assessments are important and training is also important.

Dean Allan Bjerkaas said that, since the last time he was before Council, EEP now has a multi-media classroom and 35 online courses. There is also a second online degree - the Masters in Environmental Sciences and Policy and they are working on a third degree program. They have been very successful. When a Council member asked about numbers of students in these programs, Dean Bjerkaas said that there are about 3000 enrollments each semester and about 250 of those are in online courses. In Bioinformatics there are 65 students. Dean Steinberg said that the numbers are slightly different in Arts and Sciences (AAP). They have about 2000 students and a little over 10% of them are in online courses. It is AAP's most rapidly growing area. About 50 courses are offered online out of 220. The majority of online students are from the same geographic range as the students who come to on-site classes at Hopkins. Professor Meneveau asked about the development of the courses. Dean Bjerkaas said that the development effort is strenuous. Students are checked on week to week. The instructor interacts with students 5 out of 7 days. In the future they will limit the number of students. Dean Bjerkaas said that there is a plan to refresh every class every 3 years or more frequently. Dean Steinberg said that Arts & Sciences uses video clips, but don't have a plan to put a full video course on line. There is a lead instructor who is the only instructor who would be teaching the class so they limit the number of times the course is taught. A faculty member might be asked to teach two sections of an online course, but another faculty member would not be brought in to teach the same material.

Dean Steinberg said that discussion is something that can be very much improved in the on-line environment. Sometimes students who are reluctant to speak up in class, become very verbal in an online environment. There is no "back of room" when it comes to online education. A Council member asked how many hours per week faculty spend working on online courses. Dean Bjerkaas said that most of the faculty members say they spend more time with the online courses. Dean Steinberg said that not every student should take an online course, not every faculty member should teach an online course, and not every course should be taught online.

A Council member asked about courses that cannot be taught on line. He asked how there could be an online degree, if some courses cannot be taught online. Each instance is looked at in an individual way. Dean Bjerkaas said he was not convinced that great programs cannot be taught fully online. Even experiments can be done in a virtual way. Dean Steinberg said that they are looking at "blended or hybrid courses" which are courses that have pieces, synchronous and asynchronous. They are doing it in the bioinformatics program. They already have highly qualified faculty who have taught online for other schools. There are also experts in other countries who Hopkins would like to attract but do not think it is viable to require them to come to Baltimore and teach for a semester. They are trying to figure out how to handle this. There is a semester-long design period where the course is designed before it gets taught. There are instructional designers on staff who are assigned to the faculty as they are developing the courses. Three to five courses are developed per semester. There is a lot of hands on for development. After the development part there is the assessment part. The development of the course is not paid before it is halfway taught. At least four of the modules have to be taught. The instructional designer or the associate program chair usually checks on a class to see if the course is being delivered as planned. The online courses are quite expensive, but they do reach a wider audience.

Dean Falk said that when a significant amount of online education was started in the biotechnology program this comparison of face-to-face courses with the same course being taught online was very important to him. It was a touchstone to whether we were delivering what we promised to deliver online as well as it was delivered face to face. Those experiments yielded compelling results that learning outcomes were equal in the online courses, if not slightly better. Dean Falk said that during this period they came to understand what the elements of an online course were that made it successful. With the application of these lessons, he said that he is comfortable moving to a model in which some online courses are developed directly in that format.

A Council member asked what procedures are in place for knowing a person is who they say they are. Dean Steinberg said that there are a variety of approaches to that question. A proctored exam is one of the approaches. The student goes to the library, an office or their church. They are using more and more synchronous office hours or they are using e-live which is a way an instructor becomes familiar with a student's voice and manners of expression. Dean Steinberg said that Dean Bjerkass has more direct experience teaching students online. Dean Bjerkaas added that there is frequent interaction in many of the courses. There are two ways to know if the material was prepared by a student. One is to give an exam in class. The instructor does a proctored check to see if the work is consistent. The other is that it is not hard to detect changes in patterns of writing. A Council member asked about WebCT going away. Dean Steinberg said she is chairing the University-wide committee that is making the selection of the new product. WebCT is not going away, but after 2009 the version that is used by the University, version 4, will not be supported in the same way. The decision has been made that this is too risky and so they are looking for a new product. In 2004 AAP completed moving all of the courses to WebCT. It was not a smooth transition. Today there are more technical tools available that can transition the content and there are more people who can manage the transition. The top requirement for the new product is ease of use. The decision on what software to choose will be made by this summer so that there will be at least a full year of transition. The guests left the meeting at 6:14 p.m.

The Council turned to discussion of their response to Dr. Bagger's Election Committee report. Dr. Feldman, chair of the Administration and Bylaws subcommittee, reported that he and the other members - Professors Das and Woodson debated all of the issues in the report.

Dean Falk said that for the meeting with the chairs he would like to have a list of points for which there is a rough if not unanimous consensus and a list of points which remain in disagreement. He would like Council to frame a conversation. The real question about this plan is whether it will increase the voting. It is not how many votes individual candidates receive, it is how widely people will participate in the elections. It was suggested that Council revisit this question in 3 or 4 years. Dean Falk said that he will take Council's document and the Bagger report to the chairs meeting.

The promotion of Dr. Blake Hill to Associate Professor, without tenure, in the Department of Biology effective July 1, 2007 was approved.

Remarks by the Chair. Dean Falk asked Council to mark their calendars for the June 6 and June 13 meetings. He reported that Professors Cammarata and Prince were elected to serve five-year terms on Academic Council from July 1, 2007 - June 30, 2012.

The meeting adjourned at 6:59 p.m.

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Last updated 18Jul07 by dgips@jhu.edu