BILL ANALYSIS �
SENATE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Carol Liu, Chair
2013-2014 Regular Session
BILL NO: SB 520
AUTHOR: Steinberg
AMENDED: April 17, 2013
FISCAL COMM: Yes HEARING DATE: April 24, 2013
URGENCY: No CONSULTANT:Kathleen Chavira
SUBJECT : California Online Student Access Platform.
SUMMARY
This bill requires the President of the University of
California, the Chancellor of the California State
University, and the Chancellor of the California Community
Colleges, jointly with each of their academic senates to
solicit, develop, and promote appropriate partnerships
between online course providers and faculty members of the
three systems to develop and deploy high-quality online
options for strategically selected lower division courses
under the Intersegmental General Education Transfer
Curriculum, as specified, and provides that funding for
this purpose be required in the Budget Act.
BACKGROUND
Current law requires the California Community Colleges, the
University of California, and the California State
University, with appropriate consultation with the Academic
Senates of the respective segments, to jointly develop,
maintain, and disseminate a common core curriculum in
general education courses for the purposes of transfer.
Current law also provides that any person who has
successfully completed the transfer core curriculum is
deemed to have completed all lower division general
education requirements for the UC and the CSU. This
transfer core curriculum is commonly referred to as "IGETC"
- the Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum.
(Education Code � 66721)
Current law establishes the California Virtual Campus
(CVC), until January 1, 2014, and outlines the purposes
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that it may pursue. Among other things, the CVC issues
grants and recipients may use the grants to lead efforts to
make online courses available to students across the state.
(EC � 78910.10)
ANALYSIS
This bill :
1) Establishes the California Online Student Access
Platform and provides that it:
a) Be developed and administered
jointly by the President of the University of
California (UC), the Chancellor of the California
State University (CSU), and the Chancellor of the
California Community Colleges (CCC), jointly with
each of their academic senates.
b) Solicit, develop, and promote
appropriate partnerships between online course
providers and faculty members of the UC, CSU, and
CCC to develop and deploy high-quality online
options for strategically selected lower division
courses.
c) Provide an efficient statewide
mechanism for online course providers, in
partnership with UC, CSU, and CCC faculty, to
offer transferable courses for credit.
d) Create a pool of approved and
transferable online credit courses through which
students seeking to enroll may easily access
those courses and related content.
e) Provide a faculty-led process that
places the highest priority on educational
quality through which online courses can be
subjected to high-quality standards and review.
f) Allow the state, the public,
students, faculty, and other stakeholders to
examine student success rates within the
platform.
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2) In order to accomplish the objectives outlined in (1):
a) Requires the President of the UC,
the Chancellor of the CSU, and the Chancellor of
the CCC, jointly with each of their academic
senates to develop a list of the 50 most impacted
lower division courses at each of the segments
that are deemed necessary for program completion
or meeting general education requirements in
high-demand transferable lower division courses
under Intersegmental General Education Transfer
Curriculum (IGETC) and, through the partnerships
required by the provisions of the bill, make
these multiple high quality online course options
available for student enrollment by fall term of
the 2014-15 academic year.
b) Requires that an online course
developed under these provisions be deemed to
meet the lower division transfer and degree
requirements at the UC, CSU, and CCC.
c) Requires, and outlines the
elements of, a review and approval process for
these courses that, at a minimum, considers the
extent to which the course provides instructional
support, retention and success services, student
and instructor interaction, proctored student
assessments and secure examination processes,
pre-enrollment assessment of student suitability,
the use of texts from the California Digital Open
Source Library, and the inclusion of adaptive
learning technologies.
d) Specifies that the courses
developed pursuant to (c) are for matriculated
students at the University of California (UC),
California State University (CSU), California
Community Colleges (CCC), or for California high
school students.
e) Prohibits the approval of any
course for this purpose unless it is associated
with a faculty sponsor who is a member of the
faculty at the UC, CSU, or CCC.
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f) Requires the regular solicitation
and consideration of advice and guidance on
implementation of the platform from the statewide
student associations of each segment.
g) Requires the collection, review
and public availability of data and information
related to student success including enrollment,
retention and completion.
h) Requires utilization of the state
common course numbering system for approved
courses.
i) Requires the placement of these
courses in the California Virtual Campus.
j) Requires that matriculated
students at the UC, CSU, CCC or California high
school students who complete these courses and
achieve a passing score on a related exam be
granted credit for an equivalent course at the
UC, CSU or CCC as applicable.
3) Requires that funding for implementation of these
provisions be provided in the Annual Budget Act.
4) Declares the Legislature's intent that receipt of
funding for implementing these provisions by the UC is
contingent upon its compliance with the bill's
requirements.
5) Extends the sunset on the California Virtual Campus
until January 1, 2017.
STAFF COMMENTS
1) In summary . This bill would provide public funding to
faculty and the administration at the UC, CSU, and CCC
and require the use of that funding to work with
private online providers to develop 50 courses that
would be offered by the private online providers to
matriculated students at the public segments and to
California high school students through the California
Virtual Campus by the fall of 2014 for purposes of
meeting lower division degree and transfer
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requirements. It also provides that in order to be
granted credit for these courses, students would have
to achieve a passing score on a related exam.
The committee may wish to consider the following
questions:
a) Is it envisioned that the private
entity offer technology services for the
delivery of these courses, or that the
private entity offer educational services,
i.e. courses, developed with the assistance
of public resources?
b) Is it an appropriate use of public
dollars and publicly employed faculty to
develop educational services to be offered
by a private entity?
c) Who owns the course content that
is developed with public dollars? Would the
faculty who developed the courses lose all
control or access to the content, or be
required to pay to use the curriculum they
developed?
d) Would the private online provider
be able to offer courses to individuals
other than matriculated students and
California high school students and/or
profit from the courses developed with
public funding?
e) Are matriculated students who are
already paying fees and tuition to our
public universities, and whose parents
provide the tax revenue for general fund
resources provided in the budget, expected
to "pay again" for a class that was
developed with/by public employees
(faculty)?
f) Is 50 courses the right number?
Would this statutory requirement compel the
creation of courses whether they are
appropriate for online delivery or not?
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g) This bill requires that any course
that might be approved for this purpose must
have a faculty sponsor. What real, or
perceived, conflicts of interest might this
create?
h) This bill requires "appropriate"
partnerships with private online providers
but does not outline what appropriate means.
What would be appropriate? What would be
inappropriate? Should the bill outline
contractual conditions that must be met by
contractors in order to partner with the
faculty and institutions?
2) Why is it necessary to require partnership with
private online course providers ? This bill requires
the public segments of higher education to solicit,
develop, and promote partnerships with private online
course providers to increase enrollment opportunities
in lower division transfer and degree courses.
Several examples exist of how these types of
partnerships are already voluntarily happening at
public higher education institutions in California.
Udacity, a private educational organization funded
through venture capital, offers a select number of
online courses for college credit in partnership with
San Jose State University. San Jose State also
recently announced an expansion of its collaboration
with EdX, a not-for-profit online learning enterprise
founded by Harvard and MIT, to serve up to 11 more
California State University (CSU) campuses through a
collaboratively established Center for Excellence in
Adaptive and Blended Learning at the campus. UC
Berkeley also participates with EdX to offer online
courses and currently offers six noncredit Massive
Open Online Courses (MOOCs), but reports that it also
offers nearly 30 undergraduate online courses for
credit.
Much of the publicity and enrollment in MOOCs began in
the fall of 2011 with the offering of three such
courses at Stanford University. MOOCs are a relatively
new phenomenon and the features of, and conditions
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surrounding the use of these courses, platforms, and
related contractual issues are still evolving.
Is it prudent to require the use of public dollars to
partner with private entities in a field that is new
and changing? Are there existing obstacles that
prevent or discourage faculty and institutions from
partnering voluntarily? How do we facilitate or
incentivize, rather than require, engagement with
technology and education vendors? Would it be better
to simply legislatively endorse and encourage
partnerships as an option among several for developing
online courses to meet enrollment demands?
SB 547, also on today's agenda, directs the academic
senates to develop and identify online courses to meet
the same objectives outlined in this bill. SB 547
does not preclude the academic senates from endorsing
partnerships with education or technology vendors as a
means of developing online coursework to meet its
requirements. Should this bill refer to the process
outlined in SB 547 and provide incentives or guidance
for using private online providers as one means of
achieving the goals outlined in that bill?
3) What else is already being done ? All three segments
currently make online courses available to students
for degree credit. According to a 2010 Legislative
Analyst Office report, Using Distance Education to
Increase College Access and Efficiency, distance
education courses (generally defined as using
internet, television or other modes of technology to
deliver instruction) are offered at virtually all 112
California Community Colleges and some report serving
over 40 percent of their students via the distance
education medium. The CSU reports that it offers 84
undergraduate and master's programs online, over
13,000 full online and hybrid courses, and 150
professional development certificate programs online.
In addition, individual faculty and institutions
throughout the public postsecondary education system
have voluntarily partnered with private online
providers to develop courses, some of which are
available for credit.
If online courses are a viable means for increasing
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access would it be more reasonable to first leverage
these existing efforts before requiring that faculty
and the institutions use outside, non-public entities
to meet student needs?
4) To what end ? Online education is one of many
strategies possible for successfully meeting the
increasing demand for higher education opportunity in
California. But is online education the objective or
is it simply a tool? Recent policy discussion around
our public institutions has acknowledged that while
California has traditionally been committed to access,
we have not always ensured student success.
According to a study by the Columbia University
College Research Center, "Adaptability Online
Learning: Differences Across Types of Students and
Academic Subject Areas", all students who take more
online courses, no matter the demographic, are less
likely to attain a degree, and some groups, including
black, male, younger and lower grade-point-average
students are particularly susceptible to this pattern.
The study was based on a dataset of nearly 500,000
courses taken by over 40,000 community and technical
college students in Washington State in fall 2004.
According to the researchers, their findings support
the notion that students are not homogenous in their
adaptability to the online delivery format and may
have substantially different outcomes for online
learning, and that these patterns suggest that
performance gaps between key demographic groups
already observed in face-to-face settings are
exacerbated in online courses.
This bill requires the use of private online providers
to increase enrollment opportunities in courses that
may move students toward their degree objectives.
While online courses in general have shown mixed
results as a tool for student success, private online
providers have had even less time to demonstrate that
the courses they offer are a viable means for
increasing persistence, completion and graduation
rates. Should partnerships with private online
providers be required without sufficient evidence that
this tool not only increases enrollment opportunities,
but completion as well? What authority or leverage
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would the Legislature have over private providers if
these courses do not yield the successful outcomes
anticipated?
5) California Virtual Campus . The California Virtual
Campus (CVC) began under the name the California
Virtual University in 1997 as an intersegmental effort
to establish and maintain a catalog of online courses
and to help faculty convert traditional courses into
an online format. The name changed to the CVC in 1999
when stewardship of the intersegmental effort passed
to the California Community Colleges. The CVC was
annually recognized in the annual Budget Act where it
was provided funding for the support of distance
education centers and for a grant program administered
by the Chancellor's office. Legislation placing the
California Virtual Campus (CVC) in statute and
outlining its purpose was enacted in 2008. Funded by a
grant from the California Community Colleges
Chancellor's Office, the Butte-Glenn Community College
currently administers the CVC. The CVC does not
confer degrees or certificates, but provides links to
California campuses offering technology mediated
distance learning degrees and programs. According to
the CVC there are more than 16,000 courses and 1,200
degree programs offered at 167 accredited institutions
of higher education in the CVC Distance Education
Catalog.
This bill extends the sunset date for the CVC to 2017.
6) Related budget proposal . The Governor's 2013-14
proposed budget includes funding to expand the
delivery of higher education courses through the use
of technology. The proposal includes a $16.9 million
augmentation to the community colleges and a set aside
of $10 million each in the University of California
and California State University budget to increase the
number of online courses available to matriculated
undergraduates, specifically those courses that have
the highest demand, fill quickly, and are
prerequisites for many different degrees. The
proposal also stipulates that courses must be aimed at
advanced students who are likely to succeed in these
types of courses.
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For the community colleges, the Governor specifically
articulates a goal of 250 new courses, the creation of
a "virtual campus" to increase statewide student
access to these courses, and the creation of a single,
common, and centralized delivery and support
infrastructure for all courses delivered through
technology and for all community colleges. The
Governor also requires the expansion of options for
students to access instruction in other environments
and earn college credit for demonstrated knowledge and
skills through credit by exam.
7) Other similar legislation .
AB 386 (Levine) declares the Legislature's intent
that, by 2015-16, students enrolled at a CSU campus
be provided an opportunity to enroll in online courses
available at other CSU campuses, authorizes any CSU
student who meets specified requirements to enroll in
these courses, without formal admission, and without
payment of additional tuition or fees, and requires
the trustees, to establish an easily accessible online
database of online credit courses that fulfill
graduation, general education and major requirements
before January 1, 2015. AB 386 is currently awaiting
action in the Assembly Higher Education Committee.
AB 387 (Levine) requires the trustees to establish a
series of uniform definitions for online education,
for purposes of measuring and reporting performance
data to the Legislature, on or before January 1, 2015,
and further requires that not less than 10% of new
course offerings be online courses, as defined. AB
387 is currently awaiting action in the Assembly
Higher Education Committee.
AB 895 (Redon) establishes the California
Postsecondary Online Education Task Force to evaluate
and identify best practices for the implementation of
online education in California and to report
information and recommendations for innovative online
education methods every two years beginning January 1,
2016.
SUPPORT
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None received.
OPPOSITION
California Community College Independents
California Faculty Association
California Federation of Teachers
California Labor Federation
California School Employees Association
California Teachers Association
Faculty Association of California Community Colleges
SEIU California
UAW 5810