In May 2011, the Board of Trustees approved A Transformational Education: The Strategic Plan for Canisius College that includes goals to diversify delivery systems for courses and programs and to develop a mission-based, market-sensitive online academic program strategy. The goals of the strategic plan and the realities of Canisius’ growing base of students enrolled in online programs, led President John J. Hurley to form a Task Force on Online Education (TFOE) to address how we will develop and implement standard policies to guarantee the quality and consistency of online education across courses and the schools.
On March 1 from 2:00 – 3:30 p.m. in the Regis Room, the TFOE is hosting a forum to present a draft of a policy for conducting online education at Canisius and to facilitate a campus-wide discussion on the topic. Co-moderated by Michael Pardales, PhD, dean of the School of Education and Human Services and chair of the task force, and Mark Meyer, PhD, professor of computer science and chair of the Faculty Senate’s Ad Hoc Committee on Online Education, the forum will include a brief presentation on the committee’s work and the state of online education at Canisius. Participants will then have an opportunity to work in groups to review and comment on the draft documents. The forum will conclude with a Q&A period with the TFOE committee members.
The following three documents are available for review in advance of the forum:
- Draft Policy for Conducting Online Education at Canisius College (Adobe Acrobat PDF)
- Diagnostic report that provides some context for the policy and the discussion (Adobe Acrobat PDF)
- Proposed resources needed for supporting online education (Adobe Acrobat PDF)
The Task Force encourages everyone’s participation and looks forward to the discussion. For those who are unable to attend, a video recording of the forum will be published and opportunities to comment on the document will be available at our TFOE Angel site, which is viewable by the entire campus community.
Submitted by: Erica C. Sammarco, assistant to the president; secretary, Board of Trustees
