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Instructional Support Committee |
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Attending: Anatoly Vishevsky, Jon Chenette, Cecilia Knight, Keri Kornelson, Richard Fyffe, Bill Francis, Dan Reynolds, Terri Phipps Minutes of April 11 approved. No Fast Track approvals to report. Copyright policy: Draft is currently under review by college lawyers. ISC’s focus is primarily on Section 4– Fair Use, application of TEACH Act, course reserves, student and staff liability, and use of student works. “Fair Use” compliance will largely be left up to faculty judgment, provided faculty make a good faith effort to understand and apply the four fair use factors in making their determinations. Academic support assistants and student workers will not be liable for faculty decisions. Procedures are outlined in the policy for assistants or student employees who are uncomfortable with requests. One ISC member questioned the narrow reference to “academic support assistants” rather than to “college employees” more generally. Some Academic Support Assistants have expressed concerns regarding their liability for copying and/or distributing materials at faculty’s request, making it particularly important for their situation to be addressed in the policy. The use of “college employees” would include faculty in protection from liability. Is “reproduction and distribution” specific enough? As technology evolves, reproduction and distribution methods will also change. Using broad terms is best at this point in time. Work completed by a student is his/her property. However, the College reserves the right to use student work for academic or administrative purposes. Student works may be distributed within the college community only to those for whom it is necessary to fulfill their academic or administrative duties. Student works cannot be distributed beyond the college community without written permission from the student. Once approved by the lawyers, ISC will review the policy and if agreed, endorse adopting the policy as “operational” until faculty have the opportunity to review and discuss the policy changes next fall. Endorsement language will be discussed at the May 9 meeting. The policy will not further restrict existing procedures related to course reserves, fair use determinations, etc. Instead, it will offer more options than are currently available to faculty. A link to the policy will be communicated to faculty pending approval by President Osgood. The link will also be referenced from multiple websites (Library, Dean, ITS, and others as deemed relevant). Summer workshop organization is mostly complete. Construction in Burling and Science Libraries will begin in May. Information has been and will continue to be available in the Campus Memo and on the Library’s website. It will be more difficult to do research at Burling this summer because of the disruptions caused by the move and handicapped accessibility construction and first-floor reconfiguration. Stacks will be moved to different areas during construction so materials may be more difficult to find. First and second floors, mainly, will also be affected by noise from construction. Pictorial rosters of advisees are now available. This will allow faculty to email all of their advisees as a group or sub-groups as well as review course information. Stipends for summer workshop co-leaders: Workshop participants are typically given $130 per day stipend for a full workshop. Leaders receive that $130 plus an additional $100 per day. Pairs of co-leaders have previously received $900 each. The issue at hand is stipends for multiple leaders. ISC agreed that each eligible leader will receive the participation stipend of $130 plus an equal share in the $100 per day leader stipend. AV access and security: Aside from that in new construction, AV equipment is not adequately secure from use after hours or from theft. ITS plans to begin retrofitting classrooms with cabinets that are more secure. This raised the issue of accessibility for faculty. Currently, faculty have keys to AV cabinets in their own buildings, but do not have access to cabinets if they teach in other buildings. Some faculty have been issued keys if they need access for a semester. Occasional-use access is provided by Academic Support Assistants. Jon will talk to Angie Story, Coordinator of Academic Support Assistants, to help coordinate the best system of faculty access to equipment. FERPA: The campus mail system has been designated as a secure system. This allows graded work to be distributed through the campus mail system. Other options for returning graded work to students include handing work directly to the student or allowing students to collect their work from Academic Support Assistants. Student work may not be left unattended in a public area such as outside an office door. These options are outlined in the new FERPA applications guide for faculty that will be included along with a three-page summary of FERPA regulations. This information will go out to faculty at the start of the next academic year, with discussion in a variety of venues such as a general faculty meeting, New Faculty Orientation, and the tutorial faculty meeting prior to the fall semester. The information will also be posted on the College’s Web site. Respectfully submitted, |