8-4+Notes

• Mentoring (Evan) • I-Evaluate (Evan) • Instructional Coaching (Deb) Collaborative Communities of Practice in Communication* This is a pilot group; no one outside the pilot group can enroll • New updates for __Training System (Evan) __ • Training times for New System (Evan)
 * **Review of agenda, Updates ** || **Common understanding, Identification of additional items **** (Questions/Actions are listed below in red) ** || **Evan & Others ** || **75 ** ||
 * •Governance Council (Evan) [[file:20110801103021408.pdf]]
 * Implemented a charge of $25.00 for the Mandatory Reporter Training, we experienced some communication issues
 * Districts will be charged $0.50 per student to take the other online trainings
 * Host AEA billed all the AEA's
 * The AEA's then billed each of the districts in their area
 * We have only heard from one district that will not be participating in the online trainings hosted by Heartland, that district will be notifying their host AEA
 * Currently the Online Training System is not set up to handle PO's from districts to pay for the Mandatory Reporter for their teachers, the districts have asked if there is an easier process for this process
 * Problems in regards to Heartland's business office, there are logistics issues
 * There is a problem with the pre-billing at the beginning of the year, i.e. you pay for 100 teachers to take the training, what is the process for refund if less than 100 teachers takes the training
 * The problem with post-billing is that revenue does not come in until the end of the year
 * Only the Mandatory Reporter is a charge training, the other trainings are free to participants as long as the district has paid for this access
 * Billing before training/after training just seems to be a cluster problem; it is felt that this is low on the priority list.
 * Revenue that will be generated by the Online Training System would be approximately $240,000 statewide
 * There is approximately 7,000 teachers that complete Mandatory Reporter each year
 * We have other sources of revenue, non-educational participants of the online trainings this piece brings in approximately $70,000-$80,000 per year.
 * Have we thought about selling these services across the river, this would be a discussion for the chief administrators
 * Our programmer attends national conferences, he has not found anyone that has a statewide training system. There are purchased options, but not nothing statewide.
 * Evan and Marv have looked at Safe Schools trainings, their catalog is more extensive. Potential problems may be the extensive use of Flash
 * We are virtualizing our online training server
 * Over the summer, our training server was "hacked" and began sending out emails which meant that we needed to shut off the email service
 * Trying to make it so that we do not use email all together because of this issue, but also districts have blocked emails that appear to be spam
 * We have set up three security questions, over time we hope that this will eliminate the number of phone calls that we are receiving regarding username and password
 * Tell the Online Training System support people that they have done an excellent job in handling these calls
 * How will it be handled if people can not remember their username
 * If you do not remember your username, people will be directed to call their contact on the left
 * Districts will only be allowed to look up people in their district; district now have this access
 * Districts were assigned based on the last district that they were assigned to, this worked for only approximately half of the records. Teachers will be asked to select their district. In the future teachers will have to enter a password provided by their district.
 * AEA personnel can see everyone in their AEA
 * We are thinking about using email address, but this address may change and we believe that this is how the system was "hacked"
 * Can we use the SSN or DL# as the searchable item. This may not be the best decision because people are hesitant to use their SSN.
 * State-wide Online Professional Development - Fiscal Year End
 * This itemizes the cost of the program
 * Marv Howard's cost is only from April, May and June when the training system became part of the statewide AEA system
 * When asking to make changes to the registration system, we will need to consider the cost of making changes
 * The revenue of $75,000 is for courses that ended in May; summer revenue will be shared in September
 * Administrative cost is a concern of some of the chief administrators
 * This has only been discussed with a couple of people, but will be discussed at the Governance Council meeting
 * It is a little alarming to see the initial cost of the program, but if you take into consideration the amount of revenue in the short period of time it appears that we are in good shape
 * Do the Chiefs think the administrative cost need to be lower?
 * The 10% was part of the Agreement that was signed
 * There was some other precedents that administrative costs have been 3%, they are seeing 10% and becoming alarmed.
 * The 10% covers items such as electricity to run the servers
 * Brent has had conversations with some of the chiefs regarding the 10%
 * We have had people with interest in teaching online
 * One of the problems is the implementation of creating the course for the online format
 * Evan visited with Al Burrows regarding the concept of mentoring new online instructors
 * He suggested the three face to face meetings
 * One to set up the course
 * One to maintain the course
 * One to close out the course
 * The mentor would be able to check in on the mentees course to assist the instructor with things that may be problem areas and to make sure that the course is running smoothly
 * It is a fabulous idea, it allows us to follow through with instructors and also allows us to perform quality checks
 * This provides a good framework for beginning instructors
 * Maybe during the first one or two course of OLLIE, we should connect an instructor with a mentor
 * We would need to be selective as to who the mentors will be
 * As an example, we have had the iEvaluate courses this summer
 * This went pretty well, but there were items that slipped through the cracks
 * Although Evan was in the role as an informal mentor, he did not provide the services that a mentor may provide
 * We will have other state-wide trainings, we will want to provide a mentor for
 * While this could be done through OLLIE, we could also provide it during the statewide initiatives
 * Could their be peer buddies within the AEA system that would not be paid support?
 * Each AEA has at least two people that can answer questions
 * We would hate to commit to this because Evan would hate to put something additional on their plate
 * AEA267 will try with OLLIE Cohort 5, they are trying to build a structure that builds out and provides some structure through peer coaching and collaborative work teams
 * It may be all that a person gets done in a day if they provide support as a peer buddy
 * It is a time consuming task and you begin wondering how certain items are left out of training
 * If people are willing to put in all the work, they should be compensated for their work, but we could have informal peer buddies.
 * We need to have definition behind what the mentor would do versus the instructional designer tasks
 * The duties of the mentor are laid out on the proposal, what needs to be added or removed from this list to be performed by the Instructional Designer
 * Add the mentor is not the evaluator
 * The mentor is not a personal instructor; they should not have to instruct them on how to use Moodle but to support the course through Moodle
 * The mentor is not the professional development coordinator
 * Tasks that should be shifted to the Instructional Designer
 * Checking in during course development
 * Testing the activities of the course in the role of a student
 * Conducting a pre-course meeting with the mentee
 * Helping create a plan for offering an online course
 * This list seems labor intensive and we need to make sure that we are not assigning mentors just to assign a mentor
 * The Instructional Designer will have a level of expertise that the mentor will not have when designing a course. Because of this level of expertise, Evan would have for this person to spend a lot of time with a new instructor on one course. But if it is a new initiative, the Instructional Designer will have the responsibility of designing the course.
 * A mentor would know that there are three people at Heartland that can help out with questions
 * A job description for these three people will need to be provided
 * We can not develop the expectation that Evan and Peggy will touch every course that is in our catalog. We are thinking as the mentor as a filter in between, but not as a roadblock. The mentor will know what they can answer and what needs to be passed on.
 * The iEvaluate courses began in May
 * Overall it has been a positive experience, it does appear that there is too much content
 * The entire binder from the face-to-face course was placed in the online course
 * The instructors of the online course have no experience in teaching online, but have done a nice job
 * Two additional instructors have been added to the Administrative side
 * Jane Neff
 * Lora Wunsch
 * The DE had a list of over 200 people needing to take the iEvaluate course; there are still approximately 70 people needing to complete the training
 * Rebecca at the DE seems to think that we should work through this list by October or November
 * There will be changes made to the iEvaluate program
 * We will need to keep on top of this course; we need to listen and pay attention to the changes that may be made to this program in the future
 * Conversation have been had with the Ed Services directors
 * First conversations were that there would be five required courses including a Rigor course
 * The current outline includes a Rigor course and then courses of the Administrators choosing to reflect more closely with things going on in their individual districts
 * Sharon Kurns is on this committee
 * If the way that we evaluate teachers changes, the iEvaluate course will be changed
 * The instructors of Evaluator 3 have inquired about some online courses, one course in particular is the Intel Elements course on Leadership. This course is being incorporated into Moodle to see if it could possibly be offered as part of this training.
 * Rob Brookhart is working with some individuals from AEA 267
 * We have the content, but have not gone through this with a fine tooth comb. But can put on the server to go through this training.
 * What came out of the survey as the top courses that they Instructional Designer would work on?
 * The Prioritization Survey results are located on the Wiki under
 * She not currently working on these projects, right now
 * She is getting acclimated to her position
 * Content for Every Child Reads is being moved to our server
 * A decision will be made in the September meeting
 * The Instructional Coaching timeline including finishing their content by the end of June
 * Last week as some group was asked to sit down and vet their content
 * They discovered inconsistencies in the content
 * All content has been vetted
 * The second writing will be due September 15, 2011
 * This was too big of a writing team, but we learned some valuable lessons with this group
 * Some of the participants have taken a blended course in Moodle because of concerns about the participants
 * A very basic Moodle course was designed by a small group for the teachers
 * It is meant to be a four-week course to teach skills
 * These courses are designed around the area that they are teaching
 * Will be finished right before school starts
 * These courses will be used immediately when school starts
 * The Science teachers had some concerns; Jason has been working on a separate grant through ITSI-SU
 * Social Studies is being built from the group up; they are doing one unit whereas the others are doing one semester
 * The understanding is that they begin on the fall and make enhancements afterward
 * Is there a list of teachers in the district
 * You will have to contact Nancy Movall for this list
 * Talked about changes to the funding and how this has been working
 * Talked about the changes to the password structur
 * This week, we opened up our district administration functions, this allows districts to:
 * Set a district contact person
 * They now have the ability to look up a username and password for participants in their district
 * They can register a participant for a training
 * They are able to run reports that allows districts to pull up a report
 * Currently it is all in the system
 * We will add the feature to export at a later date
 * They can send announcements through the system; can be district-wide or to individuals
 * They can upload pdf items and make their own training from them, this would be district trainings
 * We have only received feedback from two Heartland districts
 * One thing that needs to be done is a district contact will need to be assigned; this will be managed by the local AEA
 * If they have that information in a spreadsheet, it could be sent to Heartland
 * There are a series of Webinars regarding the new features
 * Wednesday, August 10
 * Friday, August 12
 * Thursday, August 18
 * These will be live Webinars
 * Evan will send out the mailing regarding the Webinars to the Online Council

• Teacherline • Instructional Designer (Evan) • OLLIE Cohort 5 (Evan) • ARRA • Every Child Reads > Evan will document how Peggy's time is being used* Instructors would like to know
 * In April there was a conversation regarding what Teacherline could offer
 * They have a large catalog that could be offered with our own instructor
 * There was discussion about these being offered with the Teacherline instructor and Heartland offering the credit
 * A group looked at the courses and checked out
 * The design, these courses are very well designed
 * There is a catalog, we do not have to offer the full catalog
 * We need to see how this meshes with our UR system
 * They would be directed to the Teacherline site
 * 1 credit $265
 * 2 credits $295
 * 3 credits $345
 * Heartland would offer the same credit scale with an increase of $25 (site-based fee)
 * Morningside is on board with the Teacherline courses
 * They are looking at more than just offering the courses
 * We have not moved on this topic over this summer
 * Evan will meet with them today
 * How much of the catalog will be offered
 * Peggy Steinbronn has been hired by Heartland to fill the Online Instructional Designer
 * Six candidates were interviewed for this position
 * When the first two candidates were approached by the interview committee the salary was not listed as a Certified position
 * The first candidate turned down the position because this person was maxed out on the salary scale and would have taken a pay cut of the position was accepted.
 * If we stay with the current pay structure, we would basically eliminate all AEA consultants from this position
 * We should not advertise what the pay structure is before we interview for the position, maybe we should see what is across the table from us.
 * This may create a disparity in salary
 * This position is working under the Heartland contract, but is not under the union
 * There are some discrepancies within the same job catagory based on years of experience
 * Maybe we call the job something different and that would give use the flexibility to set a pay scale based on experience
 * We are awfully lucky to get what we have for experience in this position
 * This will also start to create a problem to where Evan's salary falls
 * We need the flexibility to decide about salary in the future
 * Heartland's chief and business office decided that they would not go above Evan's salary
 * This virtually eliminated two of the top three candidates
 * Pay wise if we want to keep Peggy long-term, we may have to pay what the market pays
 * We need to get that statement of flexibility for both ends
 * We need to look at each individual circumstance
 * Evan's salary needs to be looked at because if it is always looked at as the cap that removes a level of flexibility
 * Evan is a manager at Heartland, but is on a different salary structure
 * When the chiefs saw the salary proposal two years ago, they had an issue because it was more than principals were making
 * So the chiefs came back with their own salary structure
 * Evan works for the chiefs not for Heartland
 * We can not be pigeon-holed by a set salary, instead of what the market will pay
 * We advertised through each AEA's office
 * The Instructional Designer does not have to be located at the host AEA office
 * Ideally we would like to have an Instructional Designer in different AEA
 * As much as Evan could do things from a distance; there is a lot of people who stop by Evan's desk for help
 * Technology could be used to answer these questions if someone is located in a different AEA
 * We could revisit this in the future to a nation-wide search
 * You can see who is registered from each AEA, please register anyone that is not registered from your AEA
 * AEA's will be having meetings next week, so enrollment may increase
 * Evan will send out another updated list at the next meeting
 * He will share with Ed Services Directors ||
 * **Current Requests ** || **Discuss ** || **Evan ** || **15 ** ||
 * • Intel
 * Moving onto the new server
 * Tweaks will need to be made
 * If large scale changes need to be done, there will be discussions about this
 * Over time as people learn about the statewide online system, enrollment will increase
 * The relationship between the statewide system (Evan and Peggy) as well as Nancy's work has been blurred
 * The question comes up to what Peggy will do
 * This will be a good time now with the transition of Peggy into her position
 * In the future this may not be possible
 * Some guidelines may need to be set as to what Peggy does and what is a benefit to the statewide system
 * We would like the statewide online council to say
 * We need to clarify what money is available for ARRA to kick in because of a proposal that has been seen by one of our members. We need to be careful about where the conversations are had and how that blurs with here.
 * We need an understanding of what they have as a budget and what funds they have available to kick in for Peggy's work
 * Conceptually everyone is on the same page, but it does not seem that at implementation side it is not like that
 * Peggy is moving this over to our Moodle system to make it available statewide
 * When do we bother Evan and when do we bother Peggy
 * Some general guidelines would be appreciate
 * Peggy is working on some guidelines for instructors
 * If you are having this issue call this person
 * Checklist of what to do next ||
 * **Online Council Planning ** || **Discuss, Next Steps ** || **Evan ** || **30 ** ||
 * Continuation of May's discussion:

• What is our role in relation to the joint director's groups (Media, Ed Service, Special Education)? • Do we have the right people at the table for our work? • Do we continue to use the current formats for meetings? • Summer #s • Feedback on new training system features Evan will check with Marv Evan will send out information on Online Training System updates Evan will work on creating guidelines for instructors ||
 * The meetings have been moved to the first Thursday of every month
 * What needs to different areas have and what we can provide to meet these needs
 * The joint directors meet the second Thursday of every month
 * If there are resources that need to be provided by the joint directors, they will receive an email prior to the meeting so that it can be approved at the meeting
 * Evan would like to have some time with the joint directors to say what the online directors are doing
 * Then he would like to attend the meetings for the Ed Directors and talk to him to know what they want done
 * He would like to be on a standing agenda in their meetings
 * They tend to see it as an add-on; instead of this is our work
 * How we prioritizing the work we do needs to be had with the Ed Services Directors because this is changing over time
 * The online committee for the past couple of years has been instrumental in the design of our work today
 * Since the council work may go back to creating an action plan and redesign of work to be done
 * There has been declining attendance at these meeting
 * There might be a different person that would better fit the role of being on this committee
 * What some would like to see this group evolve into
 * Take the next step on materials
 * Intel who will figure out our action plan
 * Copyright issues
 * Lessonbuilder
 * We can not continue to ask Evan to continue doing these tasks; the AEA's need to be the actual work people
 * Too many things are being put on the backburner; this council needs to be the workgroup and get thiings done
 * Each AEA has at least two people that have been trained at the first level of support
 * They are in large part Tech support
 * They have their feet on the ground on these issues
 * Here is what needs to happen:
 * Evan or Peggy will coordinate, we need people at the table that would have the time to work on projects
 * To get to this step the AEA's need to be able to allocate people
 * We either do this separately do this work or we work within the structure that we created
 * We do need to create subcommittees to accomplish these tasks
 * The problem is that these people is under huge pressure from the school districts to accomplish tasks also
 * Are we sure that we will have more participation in our September meeting because some AEA's have not been seen all year
 * Should we bring together some of the people that would be new members to this group
 * If you have people in mind already, invite them to attend the September meeting
 * We do not want to say that each AEA has to provide three people on this committee
 * Once we get a group together, we will have to work at making it as efficient as possible
 * How many people on our committee are license renewal coordinators
 * Four
 * It would be helpful to have that person in the room once in a while
 * There is concern that the continuity would be lost
 * Meeting could be arranged with
 * First 30 minutes being updates
 * Switch over to action/discussion time
 * License renewal coordinators could decide at that time to stay or go
 * **Closing ** || **What needs to be communicated? **
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Optima; font-size: 13.3333px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Future agenda items? **
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Optima; font-size: 13.3333px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Schedule for next year? ** || **<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Optima; font-size: 13.3333px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Evan ** || **<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Optima; font-size: 13.3333px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">5 ** ||
 * Next month is our Face-to-Face meeting, goal planning for 2011-12. We will meet at Heartland's 6445 building board room from 9:00 - 3:00
 * Next month is our Face-to-Face meeting, goal planning for 2011-12. We will meet at Heartland's 6445 building board room from 9:00 - 3:00