Tidbits, Resources, and Discussion for ELI Faculty

Monday, October 20, 2008

Questions about ELI

From time to time, it's good to take a step back and reexamine what we're doing. Help me out here: what are some things you just don't understand about ELI? These could be things where you need a re-explanation of a policy, procedure, who to contact about certain things, etc. Or, it could be something where you know how it works, but you don't understand WHY it works that way or you think it should change. This will be a fun set of comments for me to come back to after my vacation... :)

And don't forget about the ELI Faculty Lounge in Blackboard--there, you can set up your OWN topics to discuss, including sharing teaching ideas by discipline type (social sciences, hard sciences, etc.).

2 comments:

Michele B-H said...

Somewhere I heard, or read, that ELI students were required to take at least two tests in the testing center. First, is that true? Second, if it is true, why is that?

Jennifer Lerner said...

Michele, thanks for your question--it's an important one. Yes, every ELI course must include two or more proctored activities (which are almost always tests), and they should constitute a substantial portion of the course grade (we suggest 40%).

The reason is one of academic integrity: without proctored activities, you could have one person register for the course but have someone else do all their work. This way, the registered student (as demonstrated by providing photo ID to the proctor) must show mastery of the material by succeeding on these proctored exams/activities. Not all distance learning programs in the VCCS require this, but ELI always has, and new federal laws are going to push more and more programs toward our model.