Here's What You Told Us
Here are the lists of things that are working well and things that can be improved – plus a number of suggestions that are being addressed – as compiled by classified professionals, faculty members and administrators working in small groups during the college Opening Day event on Sept. 21, 2023.
What's Working Well
Students
- Amazing students!
Communication
- Collaboration from other departments
- Quick News
Instruction
- Constantly exploring different ways to say or explain things to students
- Creating a dynamic and compassionate, multilingual, multicultural community
- Creating samples of assignments
- Creating safe spaces for students
- Creating transformative courses
- Creating various assessment tools to get specific information from students
- Creative, out-of-the- box thinking
- Creative/engaging course activities
- Discussion forums
- Enlightening and inspiring minds
- Evaluating teaching methodology
- Explaining how each assignment has value or utility in the everyday world
- Exploring numerous and different media sources
- Field trips
- Following up on students in class who seem to be struggling
- Getting to know students in first two weeks
- Grading
- Helping students feel confident in their skills and daily lives
- High success rates
- Increasingly higher standards for overall course design, accessibility, course navigation
- Individualized feedback to students
- Listening to students
- Listening
- Maintaining office hours
- Making students smile
- Noncredit classes
- Open labs
- Passion
- Providing emotional support to students
- Providing supplemental visual and written examples of course materials
Processes
- Adobe Sign
- Canvas
- Flexibility for students and staff
- Forming communities among faculty and students
- Guided Pathways
- Nurturing/supporting students and colleagues
- Prerequisite clearances
- Tenure process
- Working as a team
Support Services
- Academic advising
- Answering questions to help students find information and resources
- Career fairs
- Clubs and student activities
- Connecting students to campus resources
- Counseling support
- Embedded counselors
- Embedded tutoring
- Ensuring ADA accessibility
- Financial Aid
- Flea Market
- Food Pantry
- Mental health resources
- MESA grant
- Outreach events
- Providing textbooks, calculators, iPads and laptops to students in need
- Redesigning academic probation
- Student transfers
- Study abroad
- Tutoring on Zoom
- Zero- and low-cost textbooks
What Can Be Improved
Communication
- More collaboration across the different divisions
- More communication of changes taking place, regarding the college, district, MyPortal and ETS
- More recognition of staff, faculty and student achievements
- Outreach and advertising for individual departments
- Reddit or Slack for faculty members to post teaching questions and respond
Instruction
- Canvas shells to share
- Large class sizes
- More guidance on curriculum development and revisions
- Official faculty mentoring program, through tenure
Processes
- Assigning ETS person to each department so there is consistency in services
- Automate awarding of certificates
- Automate messaging waitlisted students to keep checking open classses.
- Automate PGA tracking
- Automate SLO assessment
- Automate way to report zero cost textbooks
- Course scheduling – possibly block scheduling
- Fix corequisite registration issues, make it seamless
- Gatekeepers for eLumen
- Improve the add code process, allow faculty members to add, rather than make the student do it
- Improve attendance on Canvas to track positive attendance
- Improve/streamline academic integrity issues
- Increased flexibility and extended deadlines for course cancellations
- Long-range course scheduling
- Make PGA/PAA simpler
- More access to Pro Cards
- Speed up process for requesting key cards
- Update audit process for classes
- Using personal devices for work, e.g. cell phone
Support Services
- Advertise or do more outreach to recruit scholarship readers
- Decentralized counseling
- More collaboration with adult schools
- Program orientation for students (automating/streamlining sign-up and facilitation process of orientation)
What's Already Being Addressed
Communication
Better internet coverage
- Wi-Fi expansion is underway
- First phase of planning almost complete
More recognition of staff, faculty and student achievements
- Find more opportunities for celebrations
- For example: Events like “Celebrating Great Work” event in December
Translation on website
- Translate button now on webpages for ESL, Assessment
- Translated course descriptions posted on ESL noncredit page
Instruction
Faculty learning communities
- Partners in Learning Institute provides opportunities to learn and share effective practices
- Plans for expansion are being discussed
Response to AI
- Academic Senate working group on AI
- Developing resources and best practices
- Professional development underway
Processes
Curriculum process is too long
- Transferable courses must be reviewed by UC/CSUs
- Curriculum Committee is reviewing process and exploring new workflows
Easier ways to submit census
- Date is based on weeks of instruction, by state law
- No flexibility here
Flea Market payment processing
- In final stages of implementation
Support Services
All-gender restrooms
- In design phase now
- Construction slated for spring 2025
Employee pub
- Alcohol not permitted
- Opportunities for community building in Village Centers
Part-time faculty mailboxes
- Removed from ADM building
- Divisions now have boxes or distribute
Services for homeless students
- Referrals for safe overnight parking
- Locker room showers
- Resource Hub (RSS 143) has toiletries, period products, baby supplies, service referrals
You can also view the raw lists of submissions for