BILL ANALYSIS �
SENATE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Carol Liu, Chair
2013-2014 Regular Session
BILL NO: SB 547
AUTHOR: Block
INTRODUCED: February 22, 2013
FISCAL COMM: Yes HEARING DATE: April 24, 2013
URGENCY: No CONSULTANT: Kathleen Chavira
SUBJECT : Online Courses.
SUMMARY
This bill requires the academic senates of the University
of California (UC), the California State University (CSU),
and the California Community Colleges (CCC) to jointly
develop and identify online courses available for
enrollment by matriculated students at each of the three
segments by fall of 2014, as specified, requires that the
Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges
create a portal for enrolling in these courses through the
California Virtual Campus, and requires that funding for
implementation of these provisions be provided in the
Annual 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) Requires the academic senates of the UC, CSU, and the
CCC to jointly develop and identify online courses
that:
a) Are available to students of each
of the three segments for enrollment by fall of
2014.
b) Are in areas defined as high
demand transferable lower division courses under
the Intersegmental General Education Transfer
Curriculum.
2) Requires that the courses developed be deemed to meet
the lower division transfer and degree requirements
for the UC, CSU, and CCC.
3) Requires the Board of Governors of the CCC to create
an internet portal through the California Virtual
Campus that facilitates enrollment in the online
courses developed.
4) Requires the UC,CSU and the CCC to:
a) Develop a process for determining
and identifying which students are most likely to
succeed in the online courses developed and to
target enrollment efforts toward those students.
b) Inform students of the technical
requirements a student must satisfy in order to
successfully participate in and complete the
online courses.
5) Requires that funding for implementation of the
provisions of the bill be provided for in the annual
Budget Act.
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6) 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.
STAFF COMMENTS
1) Need for the bill . The California Community Colleges
report that almost 500,000 students have been turned
away over the last four years due to the state's
financial crisis. For 2012-2013, CSU implemented a
spring quarter enrollment freeze in response to budget
cuts. The UC reports that, since 2009, it has admitted
11,000 students for whom it receives no state funding.
The Governor's proposed budget for 2013-14 makes no
commitment to fund enrollment growth. According to
the author, online education offers a means to expand
students' access to courses and to increase rates of
transfer and degree attainment and provides an option
for meeting highly motivated and non-traditional and
working students' needs.
2) What is already being done ? All three segments
currently make online courses available to students
for degree credit. According to a 2010 Legislative
Analyst's Office (LAO) 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 (CCCs) and some report
serving over 40 percent of their students via the
distance education medium. The California State
University (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.
However, the report does note that there were few
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notable instances of distance education related
collaboratives among educational segments in the
state.
This bill would require that the academic senates at
these institutions push beyond these current efforts
to collaboratively develop and identify online courses
that would satisfy lower division transfer and degree
requirements at any of the three public segments of
higher education.
3) But to what end ? Online education is one of many
strategies possible for successfully meeting the
increasing demand for higher education opportunity in
California. 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 establishes a process for leveraging online
offerings at all three public segments of higher
education to increase enrollment opportunities in
courses that move students toward their degree
objectives. Shouldn't these courses and their
implementation also be evaluated as a strategy for
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increasing persistence, completion and graduation
rates?
While the bill currently requires faculty to identify
a process for determining and targeting enrollment
toward students who are likely to succeed, staff
recommends the bill be amended to strengthen these
provisions by clarifying that the goal of the
legislation is to provide a means by which students
can successfully access and complete courses that meet
their degree objectives.
4) How will we know if/when they have succeeded ? In
order to assess whether the online efforts called for
in this legislation have achieved the goals outlined
in staff comment #3, staff recommends the bill be
amended to require that the Legislative Analyst's
Office (LAO) provide a summary and analysis of the
implementation of the bill's provisions to the
appropriate fiscal and policy committees of the
Legislature by October 2015, and that the report
specifically include information on enrollment,
retention, and completion disaggregated by ethnicity,
age, gender and socio-economic status. Staff further
recommends that the bill be amended to require the
faculty senates and the institutions to report to the
LAO any information necessary to meet their reporting
requirements.
5) And if they don't? ? This bill requires that faculty
senates develop online courses that are transferable.
Arguably, the more difficult objective is not the
online format but the transferability and acceptance
of these courses across all three segments.
According to a 2009 report by the Institute for Higher
Education Leadership & Policy, Crafting a
Student-Centered Transfer Process in California:
Lessons from Other States, the decentralized,
segmental structure of California higher education and
the tradition of local faculty autonomy have resulted
in campus to campus rather than system-wide course
transferability agreements. Among other things, the
report noted that there is a lack of consistency in
lower-division major prerequisites and general
education patterns.
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The issues raised in the report, along with the
failure of numerous other statutory efforts to improve
the transfer process, led to the enactment of SB 1440
(Padilla, Chapter 428, Statues of 2010) which
required the community colleges to develop a two-year
transfer degree which was completely transferable to
the CSU and guaranteed their admission to the CSU.
An LAO review of implementation progress found that
additional work needed to be done by both segments to
achieve the Legislature's intended goals.
This bill appropriately provides faculty the first
opportunity to lead a process for developing, and
evaluating whether, online courses meet lower division
transfer and degree requirements. The Committee may
wish to consider whether the bill should offer an
alternative process if the goals of providing these
courses for enrollment is unmet by fall of 2014. At
minimum, the faculty should provide the Legislature
with an update on their efforts to meet the
Legislature's objectives.
Staff recommends the bill be amended to require that
the faculty report their progress, including a
timeline and goals for fulfilling the bill's
requirements, to the Legislature by January 31, 2014.
6) 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 College (CCC). 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
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
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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 proposes a more expanded role for
the CVC.
Staff recommends the bill be amended to make a
conforming change in the CVC responsibilities to
include the objectives of the bill and to extend the
sunset date for the California Virtual Campus to
January 1, 2017.
7) 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 UC and CSU 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.
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 earns college credit for demonstrated knowledge
and skills through credit by exam.
8) Similar Legislation .
SB 520 (Steinberg) 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
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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 and provides that funding for this
purpose be required in the Budget Act. SB 520 is also
on the Committee's agenda today.
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
California State University
OPPOSITION
None received.
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