Everybody-- hopefully, everybody can hear me OK. I guess I'll hope that somebody can flag and say, yes, you can. I'm looking at the group. It's good to have everybody here. I will say it's a slightly different group than I was expecting. Although, maybe I'm reading you wrong.

So to be clear, we're going over how to record hours. And we're going to be talking about recording hours related to distance learning instruction, and so on. A lot of you have been to these. I'm sure a lot of these slides are going to look suspiciously familiar. And yes, that's on purpose, not an accident, I think.

But what I will say is this workshop started based on the need to provide this information related to hours for community colleges. So just curious, how many of you are from colleges? Maybe there's a head count.

I'm not sure if this is an Amanda Lee question, or just having the group through chat saying, yeah, I'm in a college. No, I'm in an adult school, or whatever. I'll just look. Most of you look like you're from adult schools, but it might be more mixed than I can tell from.

But anyway, there was some information that was big about a month ago on the college side, where there were new ways that you were going to be required to record attendance. Basically, you weren't going to be required to report things in a daily fashion anymore. That is if students attend, you don't have to record two hours on Monday, two hours on Wednesday, two hours on Friday for that 20 weeks. You just have to take a census a few times a year, and based on that census you do sporadically, that would determine your attendance for the whole year.

So there were a lot of big concerns that came out of that related to WIOA II reporting, and also CAEP reporting. So we had some focus groups. We did a couple focus group meetings there early to mid-October, so a little over, or about a month ago, I guess. And what we found out is the methods you are already working a lot on the college side did seem to fit pretty well with a lot-- or did seem to at least be very, very similar to the methods we've been talking about since March 13 related to distance learning. That is you're not recording daily, but you're using an account of your instruction and measuring students to come up with ballpark figures. I'm using my terminology loosely. Thank you, Amanda Lee and Holly for that. I see that. Thank you.

And we found it to be very similar. So that's where the idea of doing this webinar was hatched is I would kind of bring up, more or less, the same recording attendance hours for distance learning that I'll just say on my end I feel like I've done many, many, many, many times since the middle of March.

But basically, present the same information, but in the manner that, yeah, we may not be using it just for distance learning overall anymore. It might also specifically be a way for colleges to record attendance. So it looks like we've got maybe a third from colleges for that reason. 2/3 of you, I think, are here just because you want to recap on how to record DL hours. Either way, that's fine.

I don't want to scare anybody away. But I just wanted to give the etymology of this, and also just kind of see what I was working with. So all that. I guess there's not really anything to ask you other than is everybody ready to get started. Or out of all that, were there any concerns or questions that might have come up that I need to address before just diving in?

I'm not seeing anything, so I think that probably means get on with it, and dive in. Let's dive in. There you go. Taking a page right out of that playbook there. So I'll blow it up here. I can leave the chat up like that.

So here's the cover slide. The agenda, like I said, should really look kind of familiar to everybody. Again, here's the CAEP attendance hours agenda. Recap for some of you. I'm sure this will be the umpteenth time you've heard me recap quote COVID-19's effect on adult education. Surprise, surprise there. And then we'll kind of review some of those basic concepts.

So yeah, if you did a lot of those OTAN classes, webinars there March, April, May, a lot of that information will sound familiar. We'll talk about creating classes. A lot of what we address has been the same there, but we have kind of started talking about it from an inside-out point of view. More on that later.

We'll get into details on how to record instructional hours. Mostly that, too, will be a recap of what we talked a lot in the spring, a few twists, a few new things have come up, but mostly the same. And then, again, because it's a CAEP training, not just the usual distance learning.

There was also some interest in kind of bringing up outcomes for this webinar. So there's going to be about 10 minutes where I kind of zag a little bit and start talking about CAEP outcomes, and also start talking about CAEP resources. And looking at it, it sure kind of seems like we're just sort of zagging for no particular reason. I've got to admit.

So my backpedaling defense is that that was one of the specific requests out of those focus groups. The number one request was present distant recording instructional hours for distance learning, because that will help colleges record hours and stay in compliance for CAEP and stay in compliance for WIOA II without having to dramatically change anything they do.

Another request was let's recap some of these CAEP outcomes so we can incorporate that. In particular, I'll talk about some of the things we covered in the data dive trainings in June and July when we were looking at different ways to record outcomes, knowing that our students are in distance learning, and perhaps struggling with remote testing. So we were looking at alternative ways to record outcomes, basically so we can show all the great things we're doing in distance learning. A lot of you have said that's been difficult.

So anyway that third to the last bullet and second to the last bullet come out of the blue, I admit, but that was a request, so we're keeping it in. And then at the end I want to go over examples some of those might be relevant to colleges. Some of it may not. Most of it, I think, will be generic and equally relevant for everybody. So I kind of left it generic that way on purpose, so that should be good news, given most of us are not from colleges.

But that last bullet, I daresay, might be the most useful part of this, because it gets into brass tacks and provides real world examples of different DL-related scenarios and providing kind of a mish mash of some of the methods we bring up in this training, just different applications of these different methods.

A lot of you have said, yeah, you understand those NRS methods for recording distance learning hours, and that's all fine and dandy. But it really doesn't sink in to how you need to work with it with your students until you hear some concrete examples. So that's what we'll focus on on that last bullet.

So sorry I'm talking all over the map here, but that said, I really-- I want to know now more than in a typical training. Does that sound more or less like what you were expecting to get yourselves into this afternoon, yes or no? Nobody's answering. Uh-oh, that could be ominous there.

Belatedly, we've got a bunch of yeses. I don't see any nos yet, so I'll just hear what I want to hear, and move on, I guess, on that one.

So again, COVID-19's effect on CAEP agencies. This slide everybody's seen a million times, I think. Long story short, the long-- the short answer is yes. COVID-19 has had a dramatic effect on adult education. It has at least since March 13.

So I always like to make a plug for that OTAN COVID-19 web page. We've been talking about it lots, and lots, and lots since March 13. My guess is everybody's been there. Everybody's been there many times. It's definitely been the hub of the adult ed universe since March 13.

This last one, we've got a new begin-- sorry, this one, I should have updated. There's a new beginning of year letter for 2020-2021. It's the same feedback, though, is there's not really anything in terms of deliverables or whatever that has changed. A lot of the way you do business has, but from a bottom line deliverables [interposing voices].

Oh, I didn't bring the power cord.

You still have the same quarterly and end of year data. To say, all of those requirements are basically unchanged.

Backing up, a little bit more on how COVID-19 has had a big effect. We've had some federal memos. We made a really big deal about this in the spring, because they came up with not one, not two, but three federal memos pretty much right away. One in March, one in April, one in May when we started this COVID-19 craziness.

I've got to say, since the end of May, they have not come up with any updates. I really kind of feel like they're laying low. They're not really going to weigh in on anything until we're a lot closer to the end of the year is my guess, but in any case, there's those three memos that they had right away. Nothing really to update since May 20 at the federal level.

So just to recap exactly what that was in the spring, one thing that's worth bringing up is remote testing. One story short is remote testing was just flat out not allowed before all this COVID-19 stuff hit. The feds had always required that all pre- and post-testing happened in person, proctor present. That was the big thing that these OCTAE memos changed, as you might say they, quote, unquote, "legalized remote testing." So for all of us, CASAS included, everything related to remote testing is 125% new.

Another big thing from last year is it had that force majeure, which means unable to perform or unable to test. To be clear, that was a big deal in 2019-2020. It matters like not at all for 2020-2021.

I know a lot of people are kind of hoping that we have another force majeure this year. It's possible that we might, but I can say with 100% certainty there is definitely no federal guidelines for any sort of force majeure this year. For this year, all the enrollment and hours requirements are business as usual. All the pre- and post-test requirements, business as usual. All of those sorts of things are pretty much the same requirements as always.

I will link into that last federal memo that came out at the end of May where they allowed for self-reported placement. That is you can place students for federal reporting without doing that pre-test So the feds are kind of acknowledging that getting everybody pre-tested right away and getting all that done in an organized fashion is pretty close to impossible. So what they're saying in that memo is, yes, pre- and post-testing, absolutely still required. But we know that it's going to be very difficult to do it right away like you normally do, so you can use informal means of placement so you can get the student in the appropriate program and the appropriate class and so on. We understand it might take a while before you can actually get that person with a valid pre-test.

So I'm kind of out of the COVID-19 section. Everybody hanging in there. Are we still all right here, hopefully? Sorry. Transitioning out. Thank you. Great, great, great.

So here's another slide that I'm betting a lot of you have seen a bunch of times, the official NRS definition of distance learning. That is formal learning activity where students and instructors are separated by geography, separated by time, or both. Lots of fine print, lots of-- can everybody hear me? Hopefully. I got one of those internet connection things.

I'm a little worried. I'm all plugged in. It shouldn't be doing that at all. Anyway, so with distance learning, here's all the fine print. There's obviously lots of ways in which you can deliver distance learning.

Bottom line, if students and instructors are separated by geography, time, or both, well, then by definition it's distance learning. The federal definition for this is very broad. If you need proof in the pudding, there is a link to the federal website that gives you the page number and the link for exactly where that's listed.

So long story short, when you're looking at NRS federal reporting, you know what the feds have said all along is individuals in distance learning have the same requirements as everybody else, the same enrollment requirements, the same hours of instruction requirements, the same pre- and post-testing requirements, and so on.

The little wrinkle they've had for about 10 years for distance learning students is what I like to call the 50% rule. That is if the student is more than 50% distance learning, you need to mark them as such in your data for federal reporting. If they're less than 50%, then you need to do nothing.

So just a little more on that, because it's come up more now that we've been talking about the 50% rule for a while, is this came out of a lot of federal monitoring 10 or 12 years ago, around-- sorry, too much history, but I'll just say around '06, '07, or so, distance learning was becoming very popular. It was the next big thing. Everybody was doing it.

But in most cases, everybody was doing it where it was maybe 10% or 20% of what the student was doing. But everybody was still being marked distance learning. That kind of rubbed the feds the wrong way. They didn't really want to could everybody that was just doing 10%, 15%, 20%. They really intended that to be just for the people who were doing all distance learning, or at least mostly distance learning.

So they came up with the 50% rule. They kept it simple. More than 50% means they are distance learning. Less than 50% means they're not distance learning. The way we've done that in TE all along is there is a field in special programs called Distance Learning that you can mark at either the class or the individual student level to mark that they're more than 50% distance learning.

That new feature is not really there now. But in '19-'20, we had that force majeure to track students that might have been affected. Some of you are saying you're using that informally now. To be clear, if you use that informally, that's fine.

But just know if you mark that, there's 125% chance that will accomplish nothing. There's nothing we're doing at the state or federal level with that. So if you do have reasons to mark it and you are looking to flag students that might be having some kind of COVID-19 related troubles, so they're not meeting certain requirements because of that, by all means, that might be a way to informally mark it. You can check the box. You can use the TE Listers to do some of that bean counting and so on.

But to be clear, it's not helping you for state and federal reporting, because that's like so 2019-20. Force majeure, at least for the moment in this program year, absolutely does not exist. But again, mark distance learning.

The other thing I'll bring up is that I'm not going to dig in deep into it in this workshop, but there are lots of newer features in TE where you can now mark all the distance learning hours as distance learning, and all the regular hours as regular hours. There's lots of PowerPoints and guidance documents on how to go into TE and make that work correctly for you. But you can now record that to the n-th degree if you want, where you can work all the distance learning hours one way, and mark all the, quote, unquote, "regular hours" another. Your choice on that.

So moving into some of the meat here, the three big things we talked a lot about in the spring. And again, it's not going to be word for word the same, but generally, it's going to be a lot like we talked about in the spring. The three big issues that came up right away-- class creation, recording instructional hours, and assessment. We'll be talking about those first two a lot. Assessment has really changed a lot since we did those March, April workshops, but those were the big three areas where everybody was having trouble.

So we'll start with classes, where this is a blast from the past. We talked about this ad nauseum in March and April, where, what do we do now that we're in COVID-19? What do we do with our classes now that the schools have closed and we've changed everything around? So in March, April that, of course, meant everything closed. So there were no in-person classes. 100% was moved to distance learning.

So what do we do now that we don't have anything in person and everything's distance learning? We basically gave you two solutions. We made these names up. One is called "pick up where you left off." The other is called "start brand new classes specific to distance learning."

So "pick up where you left off" is suggesting-- and it was a little bit more for there in March, April when we were transitioning to COVID, but I do think it might be relevant here as we get into 2021, where if you're keeping the classes the same-- so last March, April, that meant, hey, between, say, August 2019 to March 2020, you are obviously offering all of your instruction in person, so thereby you just created classes that usual way.

But after March 13, everything hit the fan. Everything moved to distance learning. Suddenly everybody was distance learning. So this is the suggestion we gave you for if you're keeping your basic structure in place, where you're still meeting with ESL intermediate low Tuesday, Thursday mornings at 10:00 AM. You're still meeting for two hours a day on Tuesday and Thursday. Title is the same. Teacher is the same. Students are the same.

The only difference is they're basically having everybody come in and meet on Zoom, rather than the regular classroom. That's a good example of "pick up where you left off." Most things are exactly the same. So we're basically just going to keep everything and record hours, but we just need to look at it carefully and figure out what date it was that that changed from regular classroom to distance learning. Really, no muss, no fuss, no changes to our classes at all. That's the good news.

But the bad news then is that we need to put more effort into making sure which students were more than 50% and which were less than 50% so we can mark everybody accurately in terms of that rule for distance learning.

"Start new classes specific to distance learning," we brought that one up to say, hey, yes, we moved everything to distance learning. Some of you said that was just way too big of a seismic shift to simply pick up where you left off. The teachers are different. The groups of students are different. Some of the titles change, whatever. So it's a lot better just to create classes new.

So the bad news, of course, is then you need to go into TE, create a new class instance record. If you're using some other system, create the new classes in that some other system. But it did mean you needed to create new classes.

It made it easier for calculating the 50% rule, because this way you could just mark the old classes that were in the regular classroom as not distance learning. All the new stuff you can mark exclusively as distance learning.

Now that we're in 2021, my guess is that you're about 90% something, maybe 99% this method rather than the old one, because my guess is just about all of you are all distance learning. I guess I'll just say. Any of you at all, just curious-- have any of you been offering any sort of in-person instruction yet in the 2021 program? Has that happened with any of you at all? One class. Mostly no. A few one classes.

I guess for now we're just looking at hours of instruction here to bring it up for-- yeah, I know a lot of you have done-- gotten some people in for that. I guess for this purpose, I'll say no, but not that big a deal.

Straw poll says you're about 80% no. 20% of you say yes. Of those of you that say yes, half of you are saying special cases like testing. Half of you, it sounds like, really and truly have done something that's genuinely in person.

So for most of you, I would say that means start brand new classes is where you want to go here, because you don't really have anything that's not DL yet. So that is you've created new classes there in July, August. And you've been 100% distance learning ever since. So it's kind of irrelevant.

So again, if it's all DL, you can just create a new class. Give it a different title. And then, of course, because it's a new class that's now all DL, for all of those, you would mark special programs, distance learning.

Again, back in the old-- from last spring, you might have had some that were all in person that you went out of your way to mark not distance learning. What I'll just say is maybe for a few of you this is relevant, or if you started July 1, and obviously then we were pretty much all 100% DL, if some of you have shifted some classes out of DL back into regular classroom, you might say this decision is the same decision, but just an inside out decision where you still have the same decision.

But if it's "pick up where you left off," it's the opposite, where for starters you're 100% distance learning. Now you're looking at some that might be doing in person and doing it a little bit differently. So you have that same issue where you need to do a little extra work, calculating the 50% rule. But instead of itemizing out the distance learning, you're kind of itemizing out the, quote, unquote, "regular instruction" in this case, because the regular instruction is probably going to be the exception now, not the rule.

So I've been babbling pretty much nonstop for 10 or 20 minutes. So I feel compelled I need to be quiet for a minute. Is everybody following this? Is this not making any sense at all? Sanity check is for everybody, but especially me. Is this what you were expecting to hear, hopefully? OK. I'm getting all yeses so far. So at worst, everybody's still feeling compelled to humor me. OK. Great.

So that's the class creation issue. So the other big one is recording instructional hours. So here's another slide most of you have seen many times. That is the three methods of measuring distance learning instruction from a federal NRS point of view-- clock time, teacher verification, learner mastery. Clock time just means an hour of distance learning is exactly equal to an hour of face-to-face instruction. That is your recording hours the same way you would the clock. That is recording hours the same way you would for any sort of in-person instruction.

So tying it to that community college issue, some of you on the college side are saying you're going to need to do this for in-person instruction. So again, this might be the way you do it, but you might have other ways of angling it.

We also have teacher verification and learner mastery. That's looking at recording DL instruction a little bit differently, where teacher verification is basically having teachers watch students while they're doing distance learning, and use their professional judgment to assign hours. Learner mastery presumes having the teacher watch everybody is going to be impossible, so you kind of need to set it up front and say, here is the instruction we're providing via distance learning. Here are what our expectations are for these students and these particular classes. And here's how many hours we think this work is worth.

So you're basically putting all that DL activity in writing, and then recording it as an agency in writing so it's all on the up and up. And you can apply it the same to all students. And then when students go through distance learning and they complete all of the required instruction, you can then give them a fixed amount of hours of instruction based on the fact that they completed the lesson, they completed the requirements, and so on.

So Dale's question, going back to class creation, that's what it sounds like, I think. Sorry, I'm going to get out of presentation mode. I'm hoping I've got a couple ex-- I guess these are all in the examples at the end.

But in the examples at the end, I do have some of these examples that will hopefully make it clear. But yes, I would say so. Sorry I'm sounding like a broken record. It'll be a little different from what we talked about last March and April and so on, where then everything was all in person, and now all of a sudden where we've gone from 100% in person to 100% distance learning. So we just need to be aware of that. The same sort of mindfulness is required, but, of course, in your example, Dale, we'll be starting with 100% DL and moving the other way around. We're just sort of going in the opposite direction, as we were in '19-'20. Hopefully, that makes sense.

So if you have both in-person and Zoom classes, you'll have different instructional hours regular and DL. I have a couple slides of this. I don't have time to get in the weeds. Quite frankly, I want to avoid getting in the weeds, but I do have a few slides that I want to show you where if you want, you can record hours in TE. You can record DL hours as DL hours and regular hours as regular hours. That's not required.

What's required, again, is simply to calculate the 50% rule. That said, more and more are looking at recording distance learning hours, because that does seem to help.

Yeah. I would say that if you actually-- I mean, it would be picked up where you left off. Again, let's just say you started a DL class on August 1. We'll call it ESL intermediate low. We'll just-- I don't see it. I'm looking to see. I don't see a date, Dale. So I'm making the date up, but I'll just say January 1. You're now taking the same class as you did now, but now on January 1 you're going to have the same class, but it's going to be offered at your school, rather than online.

So if it's the same title, same group of students, same teacher, and so on, still meeting Tuesday and Thursday morning, 10:00 AM, but the only difference is now in January you'll be meeting back at the school again instead of online, like you've done here in the fall, then, yes, it's take up where you left off.

And so, Kathleen, I think your question is pretty similar as Dale, but you're just giving a more specific example. Thank you, Dale.

Kathleen, are you kind of the same as Dale? Or maybe I'm reading you incorrectly. I don't see anything there, so I guess I'll just pull up and move on. But these are the three ways to measure instructional hours using distance learning.

So a little bit more about what we do. In California, we've historically used the proxy learner mastery model. That is we set it up. We figure out how many hours our distance learning instruction entails. We put it in writing at the agency level so the student knows upfront how many hours that entails. And then once the student completes the required instruction, we then record that number of hours for each student.

We've always preferred that model in California, because mostly we've been using means that isn't really conducive to clock time. We've always preferred learner mastery to teacher verification, because teacher verification requires that that teacher watches every student while the student is completing the DL instruction. In most cases, we think that's probably in the ridiculously unrealistic category that puts way too much burden on the teacher. So for that reason, we've always favored learner mastery.

To be clear, you can use any one of those three models. To be clear, you could use any combination of those two models. The answer is the same. And we'll get more into these examples in the end. Obviously, I'd better make time for these examples now. I've referenced a bunch already.

But what I'm trying to point out is you just need to clearly mark what it is they're doing. And then once they complete that, record that number of hours for each student. What we've said is if you use some wrinkle, you've got your own system that works better than any of these cookie cutter models, we're pretty flexible in saying, sure, use any combination you like, as long as you document that in your local agency, or your local agency assessment policy. And then kind of follow through and make sure you implement that with all students in the same way.

That's what I mean by that third bullet. You can vary your approach based on delivery model. You can use all kinds of combinations. The trick is you just need to be very mindful and upfront about what it is you're doing. Document it. Put it in writing, et cetera. And then apply what you put in writing for each student. It's very flexible as long as you're very upfront on how you're recording it.

The issue is-- and I'm sure none of you are doing this anyway, but the issue is if you don't document it, if it's not put in writing anywhere, it does definitely appear to be a kind of a mystery science. We don't want mystery science in any way, shape, or form. We want it to be all on the up and up. Everything needs to be clear on what you're doing. If it looks mysterious, well, by definition, it also looks 125% suspicious.

So you can use any combination, but you just have to do a good job documenting it so there's no way anybody will perceive it as looking at all suspicious. Again, I hope that makes sense as well.

So some general considerations here. This is what we've been saying a lot here over the last six months. If you're doing facilitated online instruction, which is basically what you also might call synchronous online instruction, then we're generally recommending clock time. That is if it's facilitated or synchronous, we feel like that's the same as in-person instruction.

So again, by synchronous, that means that it's distance learning. So I should have put this little grid here. Sorry for that. But there has been some confusion between distance learning and regular instruction and comparing that to synchronous and asynchronous.

So I'm going to step out here for a minute. When I use those two terms, synchronous and asynchronous, does everybody generally know what I'm talking about, yes or no?

Sorry. I'm catching myself here and realizing that I'm getting into a lot of jargon that I'm not defining. So you're saying you know it.

But anyway, both of those can be considered distance learning. So that is a big part of my point. I've heard of lots of people mix that up into thinking everything that's asynchronous is DL and everything that's synchronous, that's not DL. That's completely wrong. Both synchronous and asynchronous instruction can be DL.

So synchronous is facilitated online instruction. So that would be simply meeting Tuesday morning at 10:00 AM via Zoom. The teacher and all the students are all meeting on Zoom at the same time, but nonetheless, it's still distance learning, because you're still separated by geography.

So synchronous you might say is, yeah, you're separated by geography, but you're not separated by time. Asynchronous would be accessing that recording some time later, or getting on at Burlington at a different time from the teacher or other students. That would be asynchronous. That would be when you're separated by both time and geography.

So if it's facilitated or synchronous, everybody's there at the same time. So there's really no reason to use anything other than clock time. You can use the other methods if you want, but you're just-- in my opinion, you're creating a lot of extra work for yourself. It's much easier to use clock time.

If it's asynchronous, though, you're using video checkout. You're using educational software. The other example I gave you where, yeah, when you do Zoom, inevitably a few students are absent.

So they have to go back and access that recording some time later. So in that example, obviously, some students are synchronous, because they were there with the teacher when the instruction was delivered. Some are asynchronous, because they had to go back later to catch up on what they missed. So use clock time for synchronous, learner mastery for asynchronous.

And then we've detailed this a little bit more. For educational software, we generally say learner mastery, but there is a little bit of a mixture with that. Sorry. I should have brought that one up after I brought this one up. This was a big question. I think everybody figured this out.

What if the facilitated instruction was recorded. So first off, I think most of you now are counting the time the student spends accessing recordings as hours of instruction, but I'll bring up some of you say pretty resolutely that that's a bad idea. If so, that's fine. You can not record those hours if you don't think it's appropriate. But if you do allow it, then just make sure that the time you give the student is equal to the amount of time the students did with the facilitated session.

So the example is let's just say you did a two-hour ESL class Tuesday morning at 10:00. We'll just say everybody made it but one student. The one student, as is, took three hours to get through that recording because of interruptions and so on. What we're saying with learner mastery is we want to be sure that that student is recorded with two hours, even though it took the student three. That is we're not going to wrongfully give that student an extra hour of instruction just because they accessed it via Zoom.

If that student took three hours when everybody else took two, that suggests that the student was just interrupted with stuff. They might have bird walked on the internet, whatever, whatever, whatever. Not a big problem. But again, we need to up front suggest that we're giving that time that the recording took, and not the amount of time that the student took. That's part of what we're talking about by learner mastery, where we're just putting that in writing ahead of time so it's clear to us, it's clear to our teachers, and it's clear to our students exactly what we want to do in all those different situations.

And then here is some information about software. Sorry. I had a couple of slides out of order there.

So if you're using Odysseyware, Aztec, Burlington, et cetera, the primary way is to do that learner mastery, again, just like we were talking about with Zoom recordings, where we're looking at how long it takes a typical student to complete that unit of Aztec, or that module of Burlington, or whatever. So you're looking at saying, chapter 1 in this as Aztec module takes an hour. Chapter 2 takes 1 and 1/2 hours. Chapter 3 also takes 1 and 1/2 hours. Whatever. Put it in writing, and just equate that number that you indicated in your policy. And just give all students that uniform number when they complete that unit or module.

The other thing we always say is always contact your software publisher, whether they have things built in that help you, or they don't. You know we're saying always contact them, because they should know better than anyone else exactly what methods you should use, or give you some tips maybe on how many hours to grant, and that sort of stuff.

I think, Leanne, you're talking about-- yes, you are. Sorry, I'm sure I have it, but I wasn't sure if it's the next slide. So conveniently enough, Leanne, here's the slide that I did want to bring up.

I think what you're talking about is number one on this slide is it gets some software applications, I like to say, are, quote, unquote, "higher end," where they might recording hours built into the software. Other high end features might be they might have some lessons or quizzes built in at the end for the students to pass before they can move to the next module.

If they have that, we strongly encourage you to use both features. Again, the publisher knows better than everybody else what it really takes to get through their modules. So definitely put their work to good use, and make it easier on yourself.

So what I would say is, technically, yeah, I would call that clock time. I think there's a couple examples at the end as well where sometimes they automatically record it. So if the student gets on the module and the software automatically records 45 minutes for that student, take what the software gives you. Record 45 minutes, because the software says so. By all means, if your application is doing that for you, definitely just use clock time and record that.

I don't think there's a good import/export for that sort of stuff, so I'll add you do just pretty much need to manually record those numbers into TE so you get the hours right. I don't think there is an import/export with that, but absolutely it still nonetheless saves you from having to do all that extra work in your assessment policy.

So the next one might be not linked to any kind of programming. So in this second example, maybe it's not higher end. It's not built into that software programming, but sometimes if you look at the instruction manual or go to the software publisher website, or whatever, there will be some recommendations there. So that's the second easiest way, where it's not built into programming. But at least you don't need to get together as a team and figure it out yourself.

Just use what your software publisher suggests. And that way you don't need to put in that extra work to determine it. A lot of times when you get the software, it'll just say, hey, you're ready to start chapter number 3 or whatever. And a lot of times they'll give you a recommended time at the beginning of that lesson. If so, just use what they give you there as well.

Then number three, that's if they don't give you any of this stuff. That's when you've got to figure it out on your own. So that's when we're saying, yeah, that's when you need to meet as an instructional management team, determine the amount of time it takes a, quote, unquote, "average student" to complete each module, and then document that in your Local Assessment Policy.

So similar guidelines, but not directly related to software. A bunch of things here, well, this first one does, I guess. Even if you don't have any of this information in your software, we still think it's a really good idea to contact them. A lot of times they might be able to give you recommendations, even though they don't publish it on their website. Lots of good little nuggets they can probably give you. Before you get busy and burden yourself with all that extra work, definitely good to check in with them and see if they can maybe give you a little boost and let you cut down on some of that work you do for this.

The second bullet relates to-- a lot of you rightfully brought up, good grief, how on Earth are we going to get a management team together? That sounds like crazy talk. And it probably is.

So what we mean by that is we know you're not going to get a big team, but do try-- do get it to where it's more than one person. What we mean by team is avoid letting one person unilaterally determine this. At least have it be a two-person team as a sanity check so you're not having one person determine everything. So do at least have people kind of sanity check each other before coming up with the final answer.

The next bullet is if you want to use teacher verification rather than learner mastery. Like I said earlier, that's 100% A-OK. But be sure to state that in your local policy, that you're using that second method instead of the third method. The second bullet on this slide is why we prefer learner mastery.

But if you're doing teacher verification, that definitely means more vigilant observation is required from the teacher. It's suggesting that the teacher has observed every single student doing that DL instruction and coming up with that determination and assigning hours. Again, we think that's pretty darn unrealistic.

If you're able to do it, fine, do it. That's great. But again, in most cases, we don't think that teacher is going to be able to watch everybody doing all these activities. We think you're going to need to do learner mastery, because it's way too much work for the teacher to observe everybody.

And then, again, describe the process in your Local Assessment Policy. That's the part that definitely is covered with those examples. I did just do a copy and paste from that Local Assessment Policy workshop I've done a few times that just gives you some details on how to document it. Again, I've built it up way too much to get out of it now, so I'll definitely make time.

So here's a little bit on the TE. So actually, I'm shifting gears here a little bit. Sanity check. Everybody hanging in there? Everybody feeling like they're hearing what they expected, and so on? Sorry. It seems like it's time for a sanity check. OK. Thank you, Jackie. All right, Dean. OK, it looks like everybody else rests the case. Still saying great. All right. Thank you.

So here's a little TE. Again, we don't have time to dig in the weeds. This tends to be a little bit different based on whether you're bringing it from another system or doing it directly in TE anyway.

But I just want to point out there is the ability in TE to record exactly which hours are DL hours versus which ones are regular classroom. So far this is not a big deal, but once we get into early 2021 and some of you are transitioning back, this might be kind of a big deal again. So again, you're just specifying distance learning versus regular classroom.

There's a bunch of instructions. We've got instructions on our TE Help page, instructions on that OTAN COVID-19 website, and so on. So here again this is a little bit more in the weeds here where you're just redefining that default number of minutes or hours in the day.

Maybe it's, hey, we've got Monday and Friday. We do 1 hour distance learning and 1 hour regular on both of those days. Maybe it's that Monday is the regular classroom day and Friday is the distance learning day. I'm just making this up.

But there's lots of ways to just predefine that in your TE class instance record to where by predefining it, TE will divvy it up accordingly. So if you predefine all the Mondays are regular classroom and all the Fridays are DL, whenever that student shows positive attendance, all of the Monday hours will show up as regular classroom, and all of the Friday hours will show up as distance learning in that example.

If you're doing an hour of each each day, then whether they attend on Monday or Friday, in my example, it will give the student an hour of regular classroom and an hour of distance learning, regardless of day. It won't worry about what day it is, but it will split it up based on DL and regular.

So here's some TE directions where you go into the class instance record and you edit the intensity field, where you can basically look at the interface setting. And you can fill in how many minutes are DL, and so on.

Here's another screenshot where you can go ahead and open up that class instance. You're basically just finding-- in this case, we're finding a class that we already created, and we're setting it up so we can record DL attendance.

Here's that collect DL attendance, where, by default, it will be no. You just need to change it to yes. And then you need to put those minutes in there that are total for distance learning. Again, say yes. Click Save. Input those minutes. These are the simple directions.

So now here's where you're going to input attendance, where here we're basically going to these class records. So here is a record that we set up when we started talking about this late March, early April, where we're basically specifying which days of the week. So in this example, we're saying it's a Tuesday, Thursday class. It's 120 minutes on Tuesday and 120 minutes on Thursday. And we're inputting the percentage by class or by day of the week.