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Academic testing and proctoring of exams Dr. Barbara Echord is the eCampus Director of Academics. Academic testing is among the many duties that come under Dr. Echord’s unit. This is an area which has substantially grown over the past two years. Dr. Echord’s staff includes Barbara Sanders, the Assistant Director of Testing who manages the graduate exams; Shannon Langston, Testing Assistant; Magdalene Pilichowska, graduate assistant; and Undergraduate Testing Assistant Tammy English.
We continue to roll out the remote proctor implementation along with a change in the proctoring policy: eCampus Proctoring Policy Implementation Update The eCampus is implementing a more stringent proctoring policy effective the present term, which will improve the validity of our claims related to student authentication and enforcement of the instructor’s requirement for a standardized testing condition. The policy requires the student to use one of the following four options: (1) use the Remote Proctor device; (2) go to a third party certified testing center, such as Sylvan or Prometrics; (3) use an approved Military Education Office; or (4) use a Troy University workstation testing center located at one of our University sites. Students with extenuating circumstances can contact the eCampus Assistant Director for Testing for assistance.
Currently students enrolled in all online MBA courses are required to comply, and beginning August 1, all graduate business courses will be under the policy.
We propose to implement
the policy in the remaining graduate courses in the following sequence: Term 3, 2009: MSPSE, CJ
We propose to implement the policy in the undergraduate course in the following sequence: Term 1: Interpreter Training Program Term 2: Political Science, Sports and Fitness Training Term 3, 2009: Business Administration, BAS TRM, General Studies Term 4: Criminal Justice, Psychology, Social Science Term 5: Applied Computer Science
Schedule for course enrollment and grades due We will be changing the timeframes for determining course enrollment for instructor payment and the processing of payment for the online courses starting in 08T1. The University census date will be used to determine student enrollment. This data is gathered the day after drop/add. Payment for instruction will be the first pay period after your contract is returned. However, we have been experiencing an increasing issue with grades not being entered by the required date as seen in the table below. When grades are not processed by the required date it has serious ramification for students. We have dealt with students not being able to register for the next term courses, not receiving their financial aid, not being able to graduate, not being able to get into graduate school, and not being able to gain the promotion or a new job they were going for. In many terms, payment for the courses comes before grades are due. We will be following a new procedure starting in 08T1: If grades are not turned in on time, the payment for instruction will then be held until after grades are entered in future terms.
You will see your contract on a new form this term. No more multi-part forms.
Instructional Design and Educational Resources We have done some restructuring at eCampus and have started a unit called Instructional Design and Educational Resources with Gayle Nelson as the Director. We are currently staffing the unit and assigning instructional designers to each of the Colleges as shown below:
College of Arts & Sciences Anne Douglas adouglas@troy.edu Sorrell College of Business Wanda Edwards wcedwards@troy.edu College of Education Bob Bossell rbossell@troy.edu CCFA & HHS Gayle Nelson gnelson@troy.edu
Virginia Quadrini and Inga Oberst are part-time instructional designers working with ID&ER.
The eCampus Instructional Design unit is organizing all training efforts within this group and has hired Lee Scarborough, lscarborough@troy.edu, as our Faculty Development Coordinator.
The scheduling and textbook areas are now under Dr. Echord.
Quality Assurance Dr. Debbie Fortune and Vanessa Woods continue to review course syllabi and assure that courses are up and running each term. This is a growing area as our number of course sections grow. We will be continuing with our initiative to implement Quality Matters this year. The updated rubric and training should be ready in August and some faculty have expressed an interest already in this QM training. If you would like to be added to the list for training please email dgearhart@troy.edu.
One comment from Dr. Deb is to please be sure to use the syllabus template and to make sure the syllabus you submitted prior to the term is the syllabus you put in your course shell. If you need to make changes, be sure to let students know through an announcement. This is another area where we’ve run into faculty-student concerns.
New Programs
Beginning with 08T1 course
offerings, the GoArmyEd
program will join eCampus. Administratively the staff joined eCampus June
1, 2008. A new online degree program starting 08T1 is the
Interpreter Training Program. |
