Mary: We have a wonderful agenda for everyone today for the campus update.
We're going to have updates from all of the Exec team as to all current activities and plans for the spring.
For campus spotlight, we have some wonderful presentations today from the Music Department, the zoo as well as on a best practice of zero textbook costs so
just as a reminder that this update is being recorded and that it is closed captioned. If you would like to see it closed captioned, please click on the "CC" at the bottom of your screen. So good afternoon Julius.
Julius Sokenu: Hi, Mary. Hi, everyone. Can you all hear me?
Perfect? Okay, thank you everyone for joining us this afternoon.
I appreciate your consistency and your commitment to this bi-weekly gathering, bi-monthly gathering.
I want to start us off by acknowledging that, you know, we're past the eighth week of the semester and we're sort of
like gradually going on into the latter end of the semester and your work and your commitment to our students and your success with our students has
has not gone unnoticed thank you so much. I want to start off by just doing some thank yous to folks who have been actively involved in some of our on campus programming this past few weeks. I want to, I want to go ahead and thank Karla Montenegro Gonzalez, and the
Undocumented Student Advocacy Group for providing a range of programs and excellent excellent workshops to support our undocumented students. I also want to thank undocumented student allies for the work that they've been doing over the past
few months, making sure that this program is put together and it's effective.
For those of you were able to attend you will find that the testimony of undocumented students who have now gone on and been successful in their careers and or in the transitions to universities
is a testament to the work that we were doing at Moorpark College. So thank you to Karla. Thank you to everyone who helped to put that together. Thank you to the technology support from Michael Ashton and others and appreciate your work.
Ever should be undocumented student
action, all our undocumented students life, the rest of our campus community deserve a learning environment that's respectful and that's supportive of their goals and their dreams.
I also want to use this moment to thank our folks who worked on our Latinx and Hispanic Heritage Month. So again, and wonderful groups of presentations, in particularly I want to shout out to
shout out to
our ASMC Nicole Bicakci who put together the excellent, excellent presentation by Saul Flores who testified to the experience of immigrants who are migrating to the U.S. from Central America.
That was an impressive presentation alongside everything else from that week celebration. Next slide.
Okay, for some of you know that we've been conducting works, we've been conducting a survey of our campus communities and our district communities in regards to the way in which our human resources office processes support
equitable hiring, they support experience of candidates who go through our processes in a positive way.
As
an outgrowth of an IEPI, our district wide IEPI
grant we hired CPS Consulting, and CPS Consulting has been working with the college district now since
August, I believe, to meet with key stakeholders, get their feedback on what we're doing well and what we need
to improve when it comes to the hiring process, particularly the hiring of faculty and classified professionals, that's the focus, and so some of you have participated in focus groups, others have
been interviewed one in one. That project will be continuing with a survey sent to key stakeholders during the week of
the last week of this month due November 6. If you do get those additional service please go ahead and respond and make sure that we hear your voice.
The sponsors for this project, are Laura Barroso, Vice Chancellor of Human Resources, Cathy Bojorquez, Vice President of Business and Administrative Services at
Ventura College, Andrea Ingley, the Director of Employment Services and Personnel Commission, and myself.
And our goal is to make sure that we get feedback from the campuses and the district administrative center so that we can serve our community better
in our hiring processes, our hiring practices, and most importantly, that those who go through the process have a better sense of what is to be expected of them. So, but thank you. That is my,
my
statements or comments to you. I will pass it on to Jennifer.
Jennifer Clark: Good afternoon, everybody.
Thank you Julius. Great to be with everybody today, I just have a
few items I want to update, that I want to bring everybody up to speed on. So regarding our screening in QR code usage and compliance,
as you all know, that was a few weeks ago was about three weeks ago or so that we really rolled out campus wide the QR codes and classrooms and in buildings,
and I'm really, really excited and pleased to let you all know that in the last three weeks from
a usage of about 40% of our population, who's actually coming onto campus and getting screened, about 40% of those people were then going into classrooms, or offices, or whatever and scanning their locations.
As of last week, we're now up to 77% so a huge increase in usage, which is just again all thanks to you all who are
helping to facilitate that process and making sure that when students are coming into
classrooms that they are taking those few extra moments to just scan the QR code that should be somewhat near the door the entryway as they come in
before sitting down and taking their seats. So again it is huge, a massive, massive help to our folks in the Student Health Center who have to follow up with any contact tracing,
it makes a massive difference to them. So on behalf of all of them and the entire team I just thank you to all of you
for your support in this process. We still have about 23% to go. So I know you know in the coming weeks we're going to see that number from 77% go up because we are Moorpark College and we do, we do everything awesomely if that's even a word.
So the other thing I wanted to announce or acknowledge as far as the screening process in this whole
this whole, you know, Covid response and kind of our, the way that we've really changed how we are doing business and keeping people safe on campus. I want to acknowledge John Everlove,
our faculty Allied Health Coordinator who came on board and June, and he has stayed in this role as the chief of operations, well a lot longer than he ever we ever intended.
He was just supposed to get us going, and right plan, and put forth some guidelines, and as he likes to say or likes to say he jokes and we'll meet when we talk is,
"It's been a really, really long July," because that was all that was supposed to be and it's just been a
heck of a lot longer. So we are in the process of transitioning from John Everlove sort of overseeing the daily operation of this process, the screening and the QR codes,
to John Sinutko who very, very graciously stepped forward last week and assured me that, of course, he would do everything, anything and everything to
keep the ball rolling, and to keep everyone to take over these efforts, and continue to keep everyone on campus as safe as possible. So,
Thank you, thank you to John Everlove who has done a way above and beyond job superbly since the beginning,
and as a sincere thank you to John Sinutko, and again, I know he's going to continue along the same lines, and just be outstanding in that role.
Not to discount Sharon and all the work that she's done, she's just been outstanding as well. Fortunately, we have Sharon for another couple of months at least before we have to transition her role over to someone else, but I'm not going to get into that right now.
The other item I wanted to let everybody know or kind of update you all on is in the Financial Aid area.
So we have for CAREs you all know, not quite the cash for college yet. I'm almost there, but I wanted to update everybody on the CARES student aid.
As you know, we received well over $2 million about two and a half million dollars for direct student aid under the CARES Act.
We have distributed so far over $1.9 million to almost 2500 students. So I want to give a massive shout out to the Financial Aid team who has made that happen.
We have a balance now, as of mid October, we've got a balance of just over $668,000 which we continue to distribute,
you know, within the next few months, those funds I'm sure will be completely dispersed. So thank you thank you to that team.
We also have another source of funds that came to us a month or so ago, the Covid Response Block grant and that had
just over $200,000 has been set aside to directly assist students who had Covid related issues and these are the students who then had to take EW's in the spring,
for, you know, all kinds of Covid related reasons that are way too many to even begin to list out,
but we have fully distributed already that $204,000 directly to 277 students, who again in the springtime did need to take Covid related EW's and that funding source that CARES,
I'm sorry Covid Response Block grant, was created specifically to target those students who had difficulty in the spring and summer
semesters, in particular, due to Covid. So we've exactly targeted those students and provided some additional support to them, and the last piece on the Covid Response Block grant,
I want to thank, again I want to thank Johnny Conley and again the Financial Aid team, they've been working directly
with one another with an additional like $45,000 or so that is focused specifically this time on housing, student housing, particularly during the holidays, we're focusing on students who have lost their jobs, and have difficulty paying rent, lost their housing, etc.
Those are the students that we are again targeting with
with financial aid specifically for that purpose, to make sure that these
these students and their families have a place to be, particularly during the holidays so thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone involved that is supported each and every student in every way that we possibly can. Thank you. And as a final shout out from Financial Aid,
the slide that showing all of you,
that you can all see hopefully at the Cash for College, these are ongoing Zoom workshops that Financial Aid offers and you can see a
about halfway down through the slide it's every Tuesday on Zoom and I believe in the chat, yes, there is a direct link in the chat. If you want to copy that, paste it email it out, spread the word
in every possible way to get the word out to our students that there is help every Tuesday, if they want to join a workshop.
Thank you. I'm going to pass the mic over to Mary.
Mary: Thank you, Jennifer. We did have a question about what to students
do that don't have a cell phone for QR codes?
Jennifer: So if students do not have a smartphone, there is
I'm sure as they come on a campus, they are being screen- well, I know that they're being screened and they're getting the wristband rather than use the app, they're
using I'm sure a paper process, there's a paper process for students that don't have smartphones. So as far as their QR code in classrooms, if they don't have a smartphone, they are not able to do that. So,
you know, those students unfortunately, if something were to happen with them and we needed to contact trace it would be a manual process for those students, so that's why,
you know, we want to encourage everyone that has a smartphone to participate as much as possible because again it is a manual process for those that are not able to scan those QR codes. It's a great question.
Mary: There was also a note that HSS 129 might need a new image that their
QR code is not working.
Jennifer: Oh, HSS 129 okay I'll make sure that Sharon has that. Sharon can
produce another one lickety split. Thank you.
Mary: Thank you.
As Jennifer was talking
about looking at the all the operational part of bringing our students on campus, we started off this fall with about 90% of our classes being online and about 10% having some kind of an on ground component.
We started off with our tier ones, and our activities, and our lab courses, having some kind of a component
on ground. We have included now our conditioning for our ICA's and this week we are delighted to report that we're bringing some of our art classes, a portion of them
with some kind of an on ground component. If these move along well, we're going to be then bring a few additional art classes, musics, theatre,
again, with a on ground component. These were all part of our original 10% that we identified way back in the summer.
We had to go a little slower because of a recommendation from Ventura County Public Health and now we're staging, bringing this slightly larger group on
each each week slightly larger till we hopefully by the end of the semester will have our 10% which have some kind of an on ground component. So
we want to say a huge thank you. The students that have been coming on campus are doing incredibly well. We want to make sure that people do follow the screening. Do the pre-screening, do the temperature screening, do the wristbands,
make sure that we do the QR codes. All of these kind of safety matter measures only help ensure that we can provide a safe and efficient
environment for all of our students, faculty, and staff. So, it is absolutely critical that everybody follow the screening, the pre-screening, the screening, and the mask, the social distancing because we take safety very
seriously here at Moorpark.
As we prepare continuing on through the fall and preparing for spring, we're getting ready to have students start registering for our spring,
spring semester. We're very focused on making sure we have the best practices available for our students this semester next semester.
Last week we talked about the CVC OEI with using our own local, local POCR team to help certified courses to make sure that the design
of the classes are optimal for faculty and for students. Today we're going to Cindy Sheaks-McGowan is going to talk to us about Zero Textbook Costs, another best practice,
and we're going to see how a couple of the programs are implementing and being extremely resourceful in this Covid environment.
So let's see if since we've got so much going on I think we will go with that and Amanuel or no, I'm sorry. I do have one additional, sorry. I wanted to just to, again, Julius mentioned this one this morning, or this afternoon, I want to call out all of these absolutely incredible
resources that are being provided both by our work groups here on campus, our social justice work groups, our ones campus wide,
ones within our community, we have some ones put on by our student groups, the Latinx Heritage Month as well as VCCARA, which is a whole regional group, so we have so many resources and this happens to be one that was out there
that had a really important message, and I think that this is is just kind of what are Moorpark students service or student first
focus, every person has a story to tell, just absolutely calls it out beautifully. So I wanted just to thank you for the all of these resources and I hope you all are being able to have some time in your day or week to fit in some of these incredible resources available to us. Amanuel?
Amanuel Gebru: Thank you Mary. Good afternoon, everyone.
If you can go to the next slide, for me, please? So I just wanted to give everyone an update in regards to registration.
Today's the first day for priority registration for most of our special pop. students. So we want to make sure that we get that information to those students and it goes through November 19.
We'll also put this on the chat, but our registration folks are working hard to ensure
that we get students registered, we get them connected to Counseling and all the support services. So all the information is here for faculty and staff to please continue sharing that information.
We want to help give students in these classes as soon as possible. Could you go to the next slide please?
In addition to the registration, we are providing support services for our, all of our students, but especially for new students, first year, or returning students,
especially for those that have been absent and have been away. So we provide interactive workshops where were students who receive assistance for a course planning,
we'll provide them campus resources, how to choose courses, financial aid information, all the things that they need
to be successful as they transition in their first year or for those that are new students that are coming back to us who left us
and those raider registration workshops are on Tuesdays at 9:30 a.m. and Wednesdays at 4 p.m. and we do those virtually so all this information is on our website.
And then we also have what we call a G.O.A.L.S second semester planning workshop which is for students continuing in their second semester and we provide them some of the resources program planning in their second semester or second year,
and those workshops are on Mondays at 9 a.m. and Thursdays at 4 p.m. so a lot of good resources for students.
Folks are doing a phenomenal job from Counseling, registration, Outreach to ensure all of our students are connected to these resources that will help them excel. If you can go to the next slide please?
So another critical, some other critical information is the work that's happening in our health center with the MC Student Virtual Health Fair, which starts October 27 and 28.
There'll be some great presentations by on and off campus experts on health topics ranging from mental health, physical health concerns, environmental health, and social justice.
The MC Student Virtual Fair information is below and Michael Ashton will post that information also on our, on the chat so that you can have that information, and do I have another slide after this one? No, I have some additional
update information. There's a lot of good work happening with our new program director Sergio, who is working hard to continue building our partnership and relationships with our K-12.
We're offering in the spring semester, it's looking like we're going to be offering 32 sections of dual enrollment courses, which really speaks to the
access that we're providing to our high school students in our community. So we see more and more courses that are being requested, but we also want to thank our faculty and our deans for really working,
and our department chairs, for really working hard to continue to meet the needs of our community and our high schools in terms of
dual enrollment courses that continue to go up and which we're excited about and we want to take Khushnur and Sergio for their leadership and supporting that effort.
And in addition to that, let me see, I have one more thing...
Raider Central, just continue to remind our students that we have, you know, we have, we want to continue to provide the food and securities are students that need
food and support and that's happening on Fridays. So please continue to encourage students to utilize our Raider Central, our grab and go food which is available to all students.
And then last but not least, I want to also thank Karla, and the committee members that did an excellent job during our Undocumented Student Action Week.
We had guest speakers, we had workshops, just phenomenal work in terms of advocating for our DREAMer students, which I want to think that those folks that were heavily involved in supporting our undocumented students.
And that's all for me. Thank you and I will pass it off back to you, Mary.
Mary: Thank you, Amanuel lots of great information and resources for students and Nathan, will you be able to tell us a little bit how Music is adapting to Covid?
Nathan Bowen: Sure. Sounds great. So I'm Nathan Bowen I'm in the Music Department and this week we've had two different concerts that have taken place
over Zoom, well not actually, well we did use them anyway, we've been doing them as stream concerts. I'm going to show you my screen here.
If I can. Let's see. Great. I think I'm sharing my screen. So we've been able to on our
on our music theory and technology page embed a recording of what we've done here and this link will be shared later and then also on our instrumental music program page,
the Jazz Ensemble and Wind Ensemble streams their concert over YouTube. So we do use two different formats. We use Twitch
for our music technology or MCMT concert and then Brendan Mcmullin's group they opted to use YouTube Live to stream these and it basically
created the same sort of situation. What we get out of this, this is a very different thing for musicians, but to actually be able to talk during the concert,
it's usually the protocols you don't talk and what we've been able to do is piece together several recorded videos and then compile them all together so
in some ways, we're actually kind of reaching
audiences in ways we hadn't before. So for instance, for our stream jam, you've got, we had three different hosts, these are all students who did this
and they ran through from one set to the next and you can kind of see the way the chat got kind of bonkers with
all kinds of weird emojis added to it and it was extremely vibrant situation we have one student who is very proud of his German heritage, so we all started speaking in German,
some people using Google Translate to do that. So, and then it ended up having a really, really vibrant situation with people coming from, you know, parents,
friends, I had a roommate who I haven't heard from years who showed up and he's living in Toronto, so I guess this is an international event.
So it's a really, really successful thing we had like 325 unique viewers on the night of, which is way more than the physical capacity of where we typically
have our concert in the black box theater. The jazz and wind ensemble did soulful distancing or the mask over the bell of a trumpet or a
trombone right there and they had a kind of a similar situation. One thing that I really liked about theirs was that, number one, they were able to piece together all these performances and create a single video out of these, so a lot of editing work ahead of time. One
nice extra features of this is, you'll notice that some of these performers are showing up twice
so sometimes if the ensemble doesn't have enough trombones or something like that they'll just sort of make do, but in the way they're making do with this circumstance to leverage the virtual
situation is you have one person recording two parts, or sometimes three. So we ended up with getting a fuller sound and students are really engaging their participation in ways that we really hadn't thought of before.
So it's ended up being just two really quality events. I mean her guitar soloing was just fantastic. Anyway, it really speaks to the
the ingenuity of our students are willing to do this so I can tell you that we've relied heavily on our students helping us out using OBS
and streaming sort of working it out together. So I want to give a big shout out to Brendan McMullin for shepherding the jazz and wind ensemblists in the
jazz concert and you can still view it. I also want to give a shout out to Michael Grimes for
streaming it live, and then to our students for such a great job. So we are thriving in the Music Department making music happen under these remote conditions and and building community as we do so. So, that is what I wanted to share.
Mary: Impressive Matt,
Nathan. [Nathan]: Thank you so much and so I guess I'll turn it back over
to Mary.
Mary: Thank you. Nathan, that was really a very impressive. Wow. Mara, how is the zoo doing?
Mara Rodriguez: Thanks, Mary. Well, first of all, I'd like to thank you for coming up to the zoo on Saturday to do a walk about with me
and Nathan from Music, I want to tell you, social distancing is about the most creative thing I've heard in a long time. So that's going in my vocabulary. Well, welcome back to the zoo.
We didn't go anywhere. We opened on September 19 and Mary came up for a visit Saturday to talk about the future of the zoo and some things we'd like to work on and suggested I let you all know what's going on.
So I'd first like to thank Dina and Carrie for the amazing sign welcoming everyone back to the zoo. We have so much new actually happening in the zoo.
Over the summer, M&O helped a lot by creating these exploration stations. There are three of them that can be found around the zoo, and at each exploration station, you will find one of our amazing first or second year students with an animal ambassador out mingling with the public.
We have had incredible crowds, since we opened on September 19, so our students are starving for that interaction with our guests and they have a lot of opportunity to do so. Next slide please?
We still have photo opportunities. You see this little boy here is walking right up to a life size cutout of our tiger, Neal, and this is one of the most popular places for our guests to stop.
Thank you to Janeene at the district for creating these incredible life size cutouts that are very popular with our guests and on the right, you'll see another exploration station.
A couple of years ago, we took down some of our parrot enclosures to rebuild them and we decided to use this empty space as an educational location for our guests.
So all of this, these hay bails are six feet apart and there are another opportunity for guests to meet our students and our animals. Next slide.
We also have bio fact areas set out throughout the zoo where our students are able to educate our guests about living, breathing specimens, not just animals,
but all the the flora and fauna of our planet.
You'll also see that on the right, our third exploration station is stationed right in front of our sign, which highlights the vision of our zoo and our master plan, which includes the hillside expansion,
which would be about another three acres that we would like to see grow on to the hillside. Next slide.
If you're wondering about safety,
we've checked many precautions with the guidance of Exec council, and Ventura Public Health, and John Everlove, and I can tell you that we are sending students around every hour to clean every
surface of the zoo and, you know, we went to Amazon to find these cleaning crew vests, which make all of our guests feel I think safer. So it's something it's one more thing we're doing just to
make sure we let our guests know that they're in a safe environment and we're happy to have them back safely. For those of you that haven't been to the zoo in the past
10 months or , on the right, you will see Ira's kingdom. Ira's kingdom is the home to our lion our six year old lion Ira,
and his move in date will probably be in late November, we're waiting on some hardware to be installed for medical training in his bedroom,
and then Ira will move into this brand new almost 3,000 square foot exhibit and big thank you to M&O again for everything they did to help see this project, Pete Finfrock lovely greens work and to all the students who did all of the painting around it. Next slide.
We've also had a collaboration with Cal Lu, and we had an art student who wanted to do her senior project at the zoo and she started this, the day before the campus closed down.
She came back last week and has spent a few hours producing this amazing mural on the front of our kitchen or commissary.
So this is the outline of some incredible art, I don't know if you can see there is, you know, a tiger, birds,
an elephant. So that's one area that we're trying to enhance and add some color and then we had a student do this artwork here on the left that I think is wonderful and it's a great place to
present our virtual field trips to all of the local schools that book virtual field trips with us, because it's a great backdrop to do education in front of and really, really beautiful artwork there. So, next slide.
And as always, our students are out educating the public in our animal presentations,
because we have to spread our crowd out on the zoo now, and all ticket sales are online for any of you that are wondering, many of you have asked, and some of you have come to visit,
because the the crowd is spread out, we are offering more animal presentations. So besides the animal ambassador meet and greets at our exploration stations, we are now doing four animal presentations
and an animal training demonstration during the day. So we're doing twice as many interactions with the public, which gives our students a lot of interaction,
and really helps fine tune those skills that they practice in all of their wildlife education classes.
And then this picture on the left, I just had to take this picture because it just reminded me and I wanted to thank Exec council and everybody who had a hand in us reopening. This was a father visiting the zoo
he actually had four children with them and he was alone, and I thought, my goodness, if anything, this zoo has given this father, a place to take his four children all under 10 years old.
And at a time when, you know, school children are learning from home and you have parents who just want to go find someplace safe to take their children,
I thought this was a great snapshot of really what all of us at the zoo feel strongly about and that is opening our doors to our community
and giving them all a place to go and learn something, and appreciate conservation and our planet. So that's all from the zoo. Thank you so much, and we look forward to seeing you all up there real soon.
Mary: Thank you Mara, it's absolutely a wonderful.
Cindy, can you tell us about what ZTC is?
Cindy Sheaks-McGowan: Yes, indeed. I'm happy to do that. All right. Good afternoon, everybody.
Before I start any of these conversations, I always like to define some of our acronyms, just to make sure we're all on the same page. So first of all, when we talk about
this topic we, the term OER often comes up and that refers to open education resources and those are resources like textbooks, images, or videos
that have a copyright, but they also have a Creative Commons license attached to them, which allows us to use those materials without having to pay a fee and without even having to request permission.
The other acronym we use a lot is, ZTC and that stands for zero textbook cost and that is in reference to our courses for which students don't have to pay if we provide access to a textbook digitally.
So they can log in online to our Canvas courses and they can access their text and it's no cost to them. So sometimes students want to purchase a
version of a text that is ZTC for a low cost and we can still call that class is ZTC as long as the digital copy of the text is free to students. Next slide please.
Alright, so in our schedule of classes we designate our ZTC courses with that little emblem that's up in the upper right hand
corner of this slide and students can actually search our schedule classes for is ZTC courses. So as they're starting to plan their courses for next semester they might be doing that search
right now. There are a few different ways that faculty can make their courses ZTC.
Maybe a more simple way is to adopt an OER textbook, but a lot of disciplines don't have a complete our textbook available to them so many faculty are involved in building what we call Lego style, brick by brick or piece by piece,
like a reader or a text where their course and they can use OER, they can use materials from the public domain, they can access our library databases, or other materials that are freely available online. Next slide.
So why are we talking about this, and especially now? So we've known for a while that creating ZTC courses promotes equitable outcomes for our students and it also helps them to stay on their educational pathway and keep the momentum going. Next slide.
The other thing that we know is that when students have a heavy textbook cost of burdens, it impacts their behavior. So we've seen that sometimes students will take fewer courses
and many students like in this particular survey that's the results are shared here, many students admit that sometimes they won't purchase the textbook for a course and I think all of us know
what happens if a student doesn't purchase the textbook. So sometimes they end up dropping. Sometimes they end up failing or they end up not being as successful as we would like for them to be and they would like to be. Next slide.
So right now, the
cost of textbooks is even a bigger issue, I would say for students. So prior to the pandemic, we knew from that real college survey that many of our Moorpark College students were struggling
with food insecurity, housing insecurity, just meeting their basic needs and so having to purchase a textbook on top of that is quite challenging and now we know that
many of our students have lost jobs and others may be working more because they need to be supporting themselves and their families. Next slide.
So over the summer, the California Student Aid Commission
surveyed students to find out a little bit more about the impact of Covid on them and I included a few quotes here, I'm just going to share with you
one of them, and in this one, the student says, "The biggest challenges I faced with pursuing my college degree or financial hardships.
Because I'm out of work, I'm uncertain on how I'm going to move forward. My degree is important, but bills are not going to wait for me. I have to pay them."
And I would say we have a lot of students that are feeling this way and this might really impact their ability to take a full schedule of classes
or to take any classes with us. So the more we can alleviate that burden on our students, I think the better we can keep up our enrollment. Next slide.
So with OER and ZTC, the digital versions of the texts are free and so students don't have to make a choice between buying groceries or paying their water bill,
and buying their textbook, and I think this also has the added benefit when we provide these materials to students they know that we, they know that we care about them and their success. Next slide.
Another issue that students are facing now is just having limited campus access as we are, as faculty. So some of the ways they might have gotten around
obtaining a textbook before are a little bit more difficult for them now. So getting a library reserve or sharing a book with a classmate, even just making it to the bookstore can be a little bit more difficult. So next slide.
With OER and ZTC, our students have instant access to the digital version of their textbook from the first day of the course. So we don't as faculty have to worry
about, "Do I have, do my students have their books?" We know they have access to them and a lot of students have said that they really prefer being able to access these materials
just through their phones. So it's much more convenient for them and if they want, they can make a print copy for themselves. Next slide.
And then another challenge that we're facing right now I think some of you would recognize that blank Canvas screen on the, on the right hand of the screen. So we're all having to create a lot of online content and that can be time consuming and pretty
labor intensive. So next slide.
I would suggest why reinvent the wheel? There are a lot of faculty across California and across the U.S. and beyond that have created open education resources, many of which have been peer reviewed and we can adopt those
for our courses and that saves us time and I think also helps us to think about how can I customize these materials and make them even better for my students. Next slide.
So a few other things about using OER and ZTC, again, we can customize our materials, we could change images, we could add more relevant case studies, we could
infuse diverse voices and the materials that we provide to our students, which we can't do with a regular textbook,
and we can also engage in backward design, we can think about what our course objectives are, what is the content we want to provide, and we customize our reading materials for that, as opposed to teaching to a textbook.
And then finally, the other thing we know about using OER and ZTC is that it supports equitable outcomes. A lot of research has shown that all students do better in ZTC courses, but in particular, our disproportionately impacted students do better. Next slide.
So at our campus specifically, we have created a goal that by 2023 we want 20% of our course sections to be offered as ZTC. So that would be achieving about 679 course sections.
And then also, our goal is to ultimately have a Z degree so students could make it all the way through their program without having to purchase a textbook. Next slide.
Across our campus we have a lot of what I like to call textbook heroes. So we are making progress towards this goal we're about two thirds of the way they are right now in the fall, we had 251 ZTC sections,
and that's steadily growing from previous semesters, as you can see, and that represented 132 separate courses.
For the spring so far we've designated 237 ZTC courses and I put a question mark
on that number because I have a feeling there are some courses out there that have yet to be designated,
and again, our students are looking for classes now so I encourage you all to look at the schedule of classes, make sure your course is designated if it's supposed to be,
and if it's not, please contact your department chair or contact me and we will make sure that that course gets designated in the schedule as ZTC. Next slide.
All right, so I wanted to give a shout out to all the disciplines that have incorporated ZTC into their
offerings and you can see that there's quite a few different disciplines, across our campus and in the ones in red I indicated the top 10 disciplines on our campus who
have incorporated the highest percentage of ZTC offerings and, in particular, I would draw your attention to those this semester that have 100% of their offerings as ZTC. So that's Environmental Science,
Graphics, Journalism, Multimedia, and Registered Behavior Technician. So good for you. Next slide.
All right, so I just wanted to share a couple tips if you wanted to get started on this
movement towards having as ZTC course yourself. So sometimes it feels daunting to find a whole textbook or compile a whole textbook, so I would suggest starting by maybe looking for some alternative content or some supplemental content
that you can put into your Canvas shell. I'd also recommend talking to a colleague, so look through the
schedule of classes and see who's already created is ZTC course, ask them how they did it, ask them how it's going, and you might also want to talk to a colleague about sort of sharing this task of creating as ZTC course, and maybe you can divide and conquer.
If you want to get a sense of what's out there in the world of OER and ZTC, Google
is one of the best ways to do it. So there are a lot of search engines, but a Google advanced search, and if you go under "Settings" and you ask for "free or no cost"
resources that can be shared or Creative Commons licensed resources, you'll see a lot of images and text that's available to you.
Of course, our library can support you in this. They have a lot of materials in their databases that you can use and the librarians are excellent
resources for finding materials. I'm currently planning to put together a little workshop on November 16 to help you find out more about what's out there.
Some basic OER search information. So hopefully you'll join me for that, if you would like to know more, and I'll be sending out more information soon.
And then finally on our Moorpark College website, we do have a Zero Textbook Cost page that we are currently building and there are some resources and information
that you can find there. So that's just a little update on what we have going on and of course I am always available to you as well to help you find resources and to answer any questions you might have.
Mary: Thank you so much, Cindy. What a great program. There were two questions. One, if the textbook is optional does that count as ZTC?
Cindy: That's a great question. Well, I would say, if indeed the student does not have to purchase the book, then I would
I would consider it ZTC. So it's only a recommended resource. But if it's really something you're hoping that they're going to get
then I probably wouldn't call it ZTC. [Mary]: Thank you.
Mary: There was also a question that asked about if there are costs, if there's a materials cost?
Cindy: Right, that's and that's sort of something that's been kicked around a lot and so what
the best guidance on that is right now is if the textbook or any ancillary materials like you know those course websites that something or publisher websites
if those types of things are free, then we can call it ZTC. So if a student needs to buy a supply for example, if they need to purchase some art materials or a calculator or something like that, we can still consider the course ZTC.
Mary: Thank you. That's real helpful. Appreciate it. What a great resource on all of that.
Julius we had one question that
at the end, asking if if students can still get an EW this semester.
Julius: Yes, students can still get an EW at this semester they go through the regular processes and channels for a grade change and withdrawal and our Registrar's Office can help them out. But yes, the
Chancellor's Office has extended that through December 31.
Mary: Thank you, any last comments for the group today?
Julius: Sure, I just want to thank you all just listening to these
presentations and the
degree of innovation, the degree of resilience that we show in response to the impact of the pandemic, it's just impressive. You know, I think of this whole idea of virtual field trips for students from the zoo or the soulful distancing
concerts from the Music faculty and the fact that we're making learning a welcoming environment, even when we're online, I appreciate the hard work that you've put together,
and especially, I am impressed by the presentation from Cindy regarding our zero textbook cost desperations and the notion of a Z degree. I'm on board with that
it's a great one and I each one of you will help us get to that outcome. I want to thank John Everlove for his work, his commitment, and his service to
return to campus and the whole screening effort would not be the streamlined and effective
work that it's been if not for John and John's partnership with Sharon, and John's partnership with John Sinutko,
John's incredible partnership with Jennifer as she leads this effort and an ongoing commitment to really sort of look at how we can better serve our campus community.
Each time we'd throw something at John he was just, you know, he would just go along with it and and try and find another way of making it better. I thank you
and I know that Allied Health programs will be glad to have John back
in, you know, in with more attention to them, but he's not gone in terms of our emergency planning, John Everlove will still be steering that ship for us. So I thank you all much for being here this this afternoon and wish you a good rest of the week and please stay safe.