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You are a student working toward
a Desktop Publishing certificate. While planning your fall schedule you
go into the college Web site and look up the class offerings, first
scanning the certificate requirements page. You need to take CS/IS124,
Advanced Desktop Publishing. You then click into the schedule and find
your class. In bold red letters it says “CLOSED.”
What do you do next?
A. Assume
that it is in fact closed?
B. Assume
that “closed” doesn’t really mean “closed,” and try to track down the
teacher for permission to add the class?
C. Go
to the division office to ask if you can add the class?
D. Go
to the first meeting of the class to try to add?
Among
administrators and faculty there are widely disparate views about how
students might behave under such circumstances. Some instructors whose
classes were dropped for low enrollment are certain that students would
have selected “A” —that is, they would have assumed that “closed” means
“closed.”
The fact is that
many of the classes, including the under-enrolled CS/IS124, which was
ultimately cancelled, were not really closed. It is customary to mark
classes closed during the second full week of the session. A unique
problem this semester — laid to an IT programming error — is that all
16-week classes were flagged closed on September 3, the first week of
classes, when they should have been held open until the start of the
second week. Short-term classes are routinely marked closed on the first
day, but they were all marked closed on September 1, when they should
have remained open until September 7.
Business Division
Chair Linda Serra believes that some classes in her division may have
been cancelled because of both the “computer glitch” and the routine
labeling as closed classes that still have abundant seats available. As
a student, Serra said, “If I have this obstacle, that’s all I need to
say ‘forget it.’ ”
Kristin Bruno, Dean
of Instructional Services, isn’t so sure that many classes failed to
meet minimum enrollment because of the computer tag. Bruno, who along
with Vice President of Instructional Services Steve White, makes final
decisions about class cancellations, said that CS/IS 124 had only seven
students when it was officially cancelled on September 14, and that even
without the computer glitch it would have most likely been
under-enrolled and would have been cancelled anyway.
Serra and Rob
Kibler, Chair of Visual and Performing Arts, are certain that they lost
classes to the computer error and the misleading practice of labeling
classes closed when they are still open for enrollment.
Sharon Combs, Dean
of Admissions and Records, said there is no way to know how many
students may have tried to enroll but were dissuaded by the “closed”
label, but she thinks the numbers are insignificant and said that it is
unlikely that the glitch alone would account for low enrollment. The
division chairs can make that assumption, Combs said, “but their
assumption is no better than mine.”
As for labeling
short-term classes closed on the first day, Combs said that practice was
agreed to between faculty and administration more than 25 years ago. The
rationale: if students missed the first week of an eight-week class they
would be hopelessly behind in the work.
As for the computer
glitch, Combs said it should never happen again — or so she was assured
by Robert Owen, new Dean of Information Services.
Linda Serra and Rob
Kibler, as well as Kristin Bruno and Steve White, want more than to
avert another glitch. They want to revise the reporting of class status
on the Web site. Classes should never be reported just as “closed.”
There should be more accurate and useful information, such as “closed —
full,” “see instructor to add,” or, as Linda Serra suggests, “see
instructor or division chair to add.”
“I don’t want to
see all the classes listed as closed the first day of classes,” said
Kibler. He couldn’t say for sure that classes were closed because of the
computer label, but “if it’s the student’s first time here, they
wouldn’t know that they can add by getting the instructor’s signature.
They would assume that ‘closed’ means ‘closed.’ ”
As for the bigger
question of just how many classes were ultimately cancelled, White said
that there were a few more than normal — about 40 this semester. But he
doesn’t think it had much to do with the schedule labeling. “Most
students know you are able to go to the instructor and add,” he said.
But he said that he has to be much tougher about allowing under-enrolled
classes to go forward. “We’re in a different environment now.”
In deciding whether
to schedule classes, “I’ve asked department chairs to space out
offerings to maybe every three semesters.” In some departments, he said,
there are too many sections of classes. Our model in the past, White
said, “was to offer classes a teacher wants to teach. We should be
offering classes students want to take.”
White added that
the new Oracle system will allow more flexibility in notating classes.
He, too, would like for classes to be tagged “closed — only can be added
with instructor’s signature,” if there are still seats available.
As for certificate
classes like CS/IS 124, Bruno says that the college wants students to
have the opportunity to take them sometime during the year. Advanced
Desktop Publishing will be offered again in the spring.
But what will the
college Web site say?
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