EDLD 5301 ET8032 Week Four Meeting With Site Mentor

I met with my site supervisor, Mrs. Jerrie Sue Cleaver, on Wednesday, June 8, 2011, in her office on campus of Central Texas College, Office Technology Department (Building 101, Room 1A).  I presented Mrs. Cleaver with the three topics I had identified as potential action research projects, which were:

Topic one, in the area of school performance, stated that the purpose of this research project is to investigate the completion rate of a course offered in two venues (POFT 1329 – Beginning Keyboarding, traditional versus online), what factors affect the completion rate, and methods that may improve completion rates.

Topic two, in the area of management, stated that the purpose of this research project is to investigate and restructure the course management system for Skills Center students, including grading and attendance.

Topic three, in the area of social justice, stated that the purpose of this research is to investigate if there is bias (gender, race, class, ability, etc.) present in the units/modules taught in Skills Center courses and what can be done to lessen bias and include varied perspectives.

We discussed the potential impact of each of these topics, and which would have the most impact upon faculty and staff of the Office Technology Department.  Mrs. Cleaver felt that topic three was interesting, but would have the least amount of impact.  Topics one and two were identified as those having the most effect.  As Mrs. Cleaver is already conducting a research project similar to topic one, she felt that topic two was the one that should be chosen.  This was identified as a great need because the current system is all paper-based and needs to be updated.  We talked about course management methods, and what items needed to be looked at first, which were attendance and student/faculty grading assignment.  Attendance is currently done by students presenting timecards when signing in and signing out of the Skills Center.  At the end of each week, the faculty member to whom the students is assigned pull all of the timecards and logs the hours onto a paper calendar and calculates the hours, and then communicates these hours to the appropriate office (VA, Financial Aid, etc.) with a copy of the paper calendar.  The students are currently assigned to a faculty member by the alpha character of their last name for grading purposes, even if that faculty member is not approved to teach a specific course that the student may be enrolled in as part of their degree plan.  My plan for the attendance issue is to research and implement timeclock software that can be downloaded into spreadsheets to calculate hours of attendance and then use the electronic format to communicate with other departments.  For the assignment project, I will be seeking consensus amongst faculty members to assign students by course to assess completion of course requirements and assign grades as appropriate.  These plans were discussed and incorporated into the Action Research Plan after the conference.