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

Back to Top