Dulce Delgadillo: Research and Planning at North Orange Continuing Education, where we host the CAEP TAP team here. So we are excited today to host today's webinar as part of the technical assistance that the CAEP TAP team provides across the state to all CAEP consortium. So today, we will be talking about mirrored courses and building equitable pathways from non-credit to credit.

To start off our webinar today, if you can please introduce yourself in the chat. If you can please put your name and your title, that would be great. And I also just want to recognize our colleagues as they also support our professional development offerings, our colleagues at the Sacramento County Office of Education where we house the other arm of CAEP TAP, and also our CDE colleagues, Dr. Carolyn Zachary, I believe I saw Neil Kelly log in, Diana Bautista, along with our colleagues at the Chancellor's Office, Mayra Diaz, Dean Gary Adams, as well.

And I will hand it over to do some basic housekeeping rules and guidelines to our colleague Chandni.

Chandni: Hi, everyone. We just wanted to let you all know that this meeting is being recorded. The recording and PowerPoint will be released on the Cal Adult Ed website following its remediation. Also wanted to let you know that our SX05 part 2 webinar and PowerPoint from August 30 can now be found on the Cal Adult website. And we wanted to please ask that you fill out the survey at the end. We really value your feedback, and we use it to improve our webinars.

We also wanted to give a gentle reminder that we want to cultivate a gracious space today for lively, respectful, and professional discussions. Thank you.

Dulce Delgadillo: Great, Thank you, Chandni. Well, it is my pleasure to introduce an amazing team from our colleagues at Mount SAC. Dr. LE Foisia Renu Katoch, and Dr. Madelyn Arballo, who are going to be talking today about mirrored classes. So I will hand it over, Thank. you.

Le Foisia: Thank you, Dulce, And good morning, everyone. I'm LE Foisia. And I'm going to start off today's session with the topics. We did want to mention that when we originally designed this presentation, we had beginners or those who are new or unfamiliar to mirrored courses in mind. However, there's probably some who are familiar with mirrored or even have mirrored courses already. So some of this information might be new, some of this might be already what we just wanted to make sure that that was something that everybody knew.

So for today's presentation, we're going to go over the fundamentals of mirrored courses, how to develop mirrored courses, collaboration among faculty, counselors, and administrators that prioritize equity and sustainability of mirrored courses, the importance of counselors and support staff for mirrored courses, what courses and programs to mirror. And of course, we'll have questions.

There will be time at the end of this presentation for questions, so we will answer it during that time. You are welcome to put your questions into the chat, and we will do our best to answer them.

Also, another thing I wanted to mention is we are all from Mount SAC School of Continuing Ed. So you can think of everything that we're talking about in terms of mirrored through that lens, through the Mount SAC perspective. So it follows our college's process and procedures. So it might differ from your college, but in terms of what we're presenting today, it is how we do things at Mount SAC, OK. Next slide, please.

So we'd like to start off with a quick Zoom poll to see who is with us today. So I am going to launch a poll in just a second. There it is. And we'd like for you to answer these questions for us. We'll give you a few minutes.

So do you work primarily in credit, non-credit, or both? Do you have non-credit courses and programs at your college? And then we're getting more into the specifics of mirrored. Have you mirrored courses at your college, and are you planning to offer mirrored classes at your college, or maybe some are unsure? So if you could take a few minutes to answer those four questions, that would be wonderful.

OK, I think just about another minute. So if you're just joining us, we're asking that everyone complete the Zoom poll. I hope you can see it. There's four questions asking you about your experience with non-credit and your courses.

OK, just a few more seconds. OK, so I'm actually going to end the poll, so that'll give us enough time to look at the results. OK, hope everybody can see that. So let's see.

Do you work primarily in credit? So that's about 20% of the attendees, non-credit. 45%, both 35%, OK. Do you have non-credit courses in the programs at your college? So 93%, great, we're amongst fellow non-credit practitioners, excellent. No 7%, well, welcome,

Three, have you mirrored courses at your college? So yes 54%, no 46%. And then are you planning to offer mirrored classes at your college, or are you unsure? So planning to offer, we have about 70%. And then unsure, we have 30%. OK, wonderful. Thank you, everyone, so much for participating in that for us. OK, next slide, please.

OK, so whenever we do this presentation, I always like to offer this word of advice. I have been working with mirrored courses since about 2020. And one thing that I have learned along the way is that it really takes a team, and it takes a team of faculty and administrators.

So I always provide this image here to say, yes, it does take faculty. Faculty are an important part of getting the mirrored courses started. They play an integral role. But now, our counseling faculty, as well, especially with the pathways and transitions and articulations, they play a very important role. And having that administrator support is also a necessary piece of the puzzle to make mirrored courses work.

And so this is how we really make it work at Mount SAC is we have the teaching faculty, the counseling faculty, and the administrators all working together, participating as a team, to make mirrored courses run smoothly. So that's always something that I like to provide as we get started. Next slide, please.

So the basics of mirrored courses, what are they? Most are calling them mirrored. They've also been called dual listed or cross listed. This is different from dual enrollment. So these are not dual-enrollment courses. They are credit courses that have the exact same non-credit version. They just have a few differences. For example, in non-credit, we do hours instead of units.

When the faculty teach the course, it's the same faculty. So it's the credit faculty teaching their course. It's scheduled at the same time, and the students are held to the same syllabus. The class itself, the mirrored class is listed in the schedule of classes with the number of seats available in the class, and they are usually CTE courses, or career education courses in this case. So those are the courses that we normally mirror. So those that fall under VOC or short-term vocational. Next slide.

So this is more about the student perspective. So why should students take mirrored courses? Since they're noncredit, they're a free, a low-stakes option. It allows a student to explore a course. Maybe they want to get their feet wet, or they're not sure if this is the right pathway for them. So that gives them the opportunity to do so.

This could be for skill building, to build on the skills that they already have. Maybe they want to get a job promotion, or they need immediate employment. So mirrored courses provides them with the training that they need.

Also, sometimes employers don't require a certificate, so this could serve in its place, as well, by taking the course. They might need extra time mastering the content. It's great for English language learners, right, with work experience from their home country.

So I've had students who maybe were accountants in their home country, and then they'll come here and then they'll take a mirrored course, just so they can see the difference between taking accounting class here versus in their home country. It provides the opportunity for repeatability.

My colleague Renu will talk more about transitions and articulations and credit by exam, and then she'll also talk more about the non-resident students that were able to serve through mirrored courses, as well. Next slide. Switching it over to Madelyn.

Madelyn Arballo: OK, so just a few more repeated things. It is a good way to start non-credit in your college if you don't have any non-credit. It doesn't take as much. But courses are tuition free, like we said. Oh, sorry.

You don't need additional rooms or equipment. That's always been a great thing for us because the students can still have access to all that, and then just the pathways for different students. It does open up the door for non-residents, which is a big part of our student population.

And then the articulations, which we'll talk about later, that we've just really honestly started moving on. And then just additional college FTES, the CDCP rate. I think that's last year's. I think this year's is 7,436. I think those two are reversed, but that's OK. So the CDCP rate is that, so it is additional college FTES. Next slide.

Le Foisia: So this provides a flow chart of how mirrored courses work at Mount SAC, so from curriculum development, all the way to actually offering the class. So as you can see in those orange boxes, those are the initial stages of actually having those conversations between faculty for new mirrored courses to develop them, and then creating the actual course itself in our curriculum management system, and then having it go through local and Chancellor's Office approval.

And then the green boxes represent the registration process. Having the number of seats at Mount SAC, the average is about three to five seats. In a mirrored course. The max would be seven, and sometimes we even just offer one seat. It's really up to the credit faculty member teaching the course to help us determine the number of seats that are available for non-credit students in the class. And they currently do the registration through us in non-credit. Non-credit students, again, they attend the same credit course and have the same course requirements as credit.

And then for the yellow box, that actually represents what the instructors do in the class. So those are the credit instructors. They would enter weekly positive attendance, and they're also responsible for giving the students the grades. For noncredit grades, we do progress indicators, so pass no pass, SP, and then at the end, we have the grading certificates that I just mentioned with the pass and no pass. OK, next slide, please.

So we wanted to provide you an example of a pathway that does have a mirrored course in it. So if you see that light-blue box, that's actually a non-credit contextualized ESL class. It's called our ESU for Welding class. And what students will do is that they'll take that class in preparation for a mirrored Introduction to Welding class. So they take those two courses together and then that helps to prepare them as they continue down the pathway.

So that credit class, again, is a credit class, but then there's also a mirrored version of it. So our non-credit students will take it as a mirrored class and then the non-credit ESU serves as a support for them to be more familiar with the concepts and the language going into the class. So they'll be better prepared and more likely to succeed in the class. And then all the darker-blue boxes, that's the whole entire welding pathway. So we just wanted to give an example of that. OK, next slide, please.

And I'm going to pass it off to Renu.

RENU Katoch: Hi, good morning. My name is Renu Katoch, and I am the transitional counselor. Last year, Mount SAC created a position just to focus on transitions from non-credit to credit. And that's where my role came in, as one of the projects that I worked on was the mirrored courses.

So that's kind of a critical piece when you're meeting with a student because student needs to know more than just getting the class articulated from non-credit to credit. There's other resources for students on campus, like basic needs, educational planning. This gives an opportunity for transitional counselor to meet with students and provide those services because there are more support our students need in order to be successful in credit side. So next slide, please.

So as you can see that when this mirror articulation, this is the data we have right now, being the transitional counselor gave me the opportunity to work on this particular project when I got hired for this role. And as you can see, in prior to 2023, there was not much numbers. If you look at the numbers, they're not very high numbers.

But with the support of the SCE staff, the transitional counselor, we developed a process for tracking. Because our students were getting enrolled in classes, but we didn't know where they were. So we needed to know a rundown list of who these students are, so we can have some kind of tracking. It's not just somebody comes in who makes an appointment and gets lucky to see a counselor and counselor informs them about it. We have hundreds of students who enrolled in mirrored courses.

So we created a team. I worked with the articulation officers who were on our team over here. It's not just one person's job that they see me and then it's done. Its whole, like, a village that has to work together to make sure this articulation is completed. So we have counselors involved in that. We have the SCE staff involved in that.

Articulation officers, once I help the student, the paperwork goes to them and then the admissions and the faculty. So there's a lot of people involved in this. In order to be successful. Transition can happen for a student, and they can get the grade, they articulate the grade. So you can see by giving all the love and care and attention to this program, we had the highest number of articulation done from fall 2024-- sorry, '23 until this year. Next slide.

So this is how I usually run the numbers. So every student gets the opportunity to see me. We run an Argus report of all the students who are enrolled in mirrored courses. Then I go into Banner system, and I look into the Banner system to see which students are eligible.

Basically, when you look at it, we have to identify the students. We could have students who have previously told me they're not interested in this program, and I have that data. Or we could have a student who's a non-resident student, who might not be able to articulate this class, but we still want to meet with them so we can give them other support on the credit side. Next slide, please.

So once I have identified the students who are eligible for the program, my running after them works, so we try to reach our students. So we have a list of all the students, and we give two weeks, once they register for classes. Because within two weeks, students can drop a class or add a class. So we want to capture everybody.

So by the third week of the semester, we run the report, I do my investigation on my end, and then I start calling the students. And we start calling the students by phone, text messages, personal emails, Mount SAC emails. And I work with the articulation officers also.

So they get in touch with the instructors also to let them know you have a student sitting in your class who is a mirrored student, who can get the class articulated. Our goal is to get the student as early as they can see me, so I can help with the process. It's not as simple as filling out a form, and we'll change the grade.

| are so many steps involved to it because our students have to have a credit application on file, so they have to see me early on, so I can make sure they have one and follow up with them to make sure the articulation paperwork is done and reaches to the next level and the third level and the fourth level. Next slide, please.

And we have many success stories, and this is one of the success stories. The student came to see me. His name was Kevin, and he wanted to get his classes articulated. He was so excited to go to college.

When he came to see me, we found out that he was an asylum student, and his status being non-resident, we weren't able to articulate his class at the moment because of his residency status. He was very disappointed because that was his one way of getting into college and getting college credits.

Long story short, we had a conversation. That's what I have a lot with my students, a conversation. I don't know my student when they walk in, but once they leave my door, I know my student. So when he told me he was an asylum student, we opened up a door for him. Because asylum students can establish residency based on the documentation they have.

So we helped him establish the residency, and he started his college journey in summer. He took four units, and he got a 4.0 GPA. Right now he's taking 13 units, and his major is political science. He's in the EOPS programs, and he's getting the financial aid, the support he needs. He's getting all his books he needs.

The student who never thought he could go to college, not is only he's going to college, he is getting all the support he needs because of one conversation he had with a counselor. So we dig more deeper than just asking them what they need, because a lot of times our students don't know what they need. And as a holistic approach of being non-credit counselor, we ask more deeper questions to make sure we can put them on the right path. And I think next slide.

Madelyn Arballo: And before we go to this one, I want to talk a little bit about Renu just said in terms of the residency. She didn't hit too much on there, but one of the roles of us creating her position, was because the enormous number of-- the growing number of non-residents that were at our front doors. And we needed to figure a way to support them and be able to have a counselor dedicated for that. And the mirrored students are no different. There's a lot of residency issues that she has to plow through for that, OK.

So we did a little data collection, and I have to tell you that mirrored programs at Mount SAC have happened since 1984, 1982, 1984. So it was way before many of us ever got to Mount SAC. And so I think there one of the first colleges to ever do it.

But we never really spent time looking at who, what, where why, how they got to us. We didn't know until recently, even how they got to us. We just knew that there were about 500 students a year. But that has changed since the pandemic.

And they came to us, so we decided to do this research project on mirrored students and why they come, who comes, who's finishing, do they go to credit for certain courses? We don't know those things, so we are now doing that. But this is what we found out.

We were one of the first returners on campus, in person, after the pandemic. We came back in 2021 pretty quickly, specifically the CTE areas because they couldn't do much, during the pandemic. So anyway, this is who has been enrolling. And as you can see, most of them are in welding, which by the way, when we pulled our data, that even surprised me that it was that much welding because I'm thinking, wow, we have a lot of classes in welding that are mirrored. And as LE mentioned, it's like three to five seats. Occasionally, welding will go up to seven but not typically. But these are the other areas that students have been, the top 10. We have other ones, but those are the top 10. OK, next slide.

So then we pulled the enrollment demographics just for last year. For this part we just did last year. And as you can see, they're mostly Hispanic and Latino and then Asian students. They're male and female. There's mostly males, and so that was kind of an interest. So we're going to see what they're actually registering for soon and then the course completion by demographics,

And we haven't looked at the certificate completions because our certificates like from College of the Canyon, are not completely mirrored. We mirror the classes, but we then create our own non-credit certificates. We rarely mirror the certificate anymore. In fact, we're going back and looking at the feasibility of that.

But right now, course completion, this is who's completing our classes is, again, the same populations of students and more males than females. OK, so go on for that.

As far as transition data, this is something that Mount SAC has also engaged in is trying to increase our transitions. We do transition a lot of students because we have a lot of students at Mount SAC. So we transition about 6,000 to 7,000 a year, and we have engaged in some work with WestEd on how our transition rate can increase for those who we're not reaching.

Because in all our colleges, there's just those that we're just not reaching. And so when we know we're not reaching those who are going to transition, more savvy. We know that they're continuing on with that. But the percentage of students, and this is from 2018-19. And so that '18-'19 was the last real year that we knew the old way.

But the percentage of students who transition, and these are non-credit, first-time non-credit students, never been in credit. First-time credit students, I mean. They started in non-credit. So the percentage of students who transitioned to credit, in the past six, years is 49% of them, about 484 exactly have transitioned since 2018-19, so that's a good amount.

Again, we know the demographics of who they are, but what they're transitioning to, we haven't quite gotten that yet. And so it's going to be of interest to us to know, was the mirrored course something that got him used to credit in general, or was it something that led to them going into that field? And maybe they thought, I want to do a different field, and now I'm a credit student, I can do this.

I have to tell you that the best period, best mentors for our mirrored students are the faculty who are teaching them. They are such great mentors to our students and have been their biggest cheerleaders besides our faculty. So, OK, next slide.

Le Foisia: So this slide shows the 10 categories of non-credit courses. And the reason why it's here, is just as a reminder. Oftentimes, when I'm working with faculty who are asking, can I mirror this course? Can I do this? I'll often say, well, does it fit within the 10 categories of non-credit? And then I'll explain to them that majority of the time we're looking for short-term vocational courses to mirror, so for them would be the CTE or career education side.

So that's why it says here, when considering which courses to mirror, remember, there are 10 non-credit instructional categories. So you can see them listed there in the circles. The ones that have the darker-red circle around them, those are the CDCP areas. So CDCP means Career Development and College Preparation.

And then as I have mentioned, and I think my co-presenters have also, the yellow star is where the majority of our mirrored courses are, in terms of non-credit and at Mount SAC. So they're in our short-term vocational area. So I think I'll pass it on to the next slide. It's Madelyn.

Madelyn Arballo: So here are some questions that we ask ourselves and other people have asked us is, what courses can you mirror, and what are you trying to accomplish with mirrored courses? This is starting to open up into an interesting kind of a tilt these days, I'm noticing.

Because it seemed so simple before. But now, as things changed in our system for credit and also some of the limitations for credit students, we've found some interesting questions. So we always our first question we ask ourselves is, what is the area of adult ed and noncredit? Is it one of the areas of adult ed?

And so some people have a different interpretation of what an area of adult ed is. And so we go by ED code, which we listed in the previous slide. One of the ED code notations notes pre-transfer. So we have really stuck to that because that's our mission here at Mount SAC.

So what happens when someone wants a class where 30 out of the 40 seats are non-credit in a mirrored class? Is that really a mirrored class? At Mount SAC we do not believe so. So we've never had anyone ask us that. We wouldn't do that because we are five to seven students is the max, two to three is more normal. And so asking yourself, is this really a mirrored class? Are there other reasons?

And if that's the case, and believe me, we have had a big demand for a certain class, and one of our mirrored classes would fit. And so, although it's mirrored, it is also a non-credit class. And so we will go to the faculty as a courtesy and say, hey, we would like to run a non-credit standalone with this mirrored class.

I still remember one faculty saying, do you have to ask my permission? And I said, not really. But I would rather have us be in a collaborative kind of relationship when we do this, since we started together anyway. And so we ran it as a standalone, and I don't think we've done it too many times, but we have.

So does your college mirror transfer-level courses? We do not. We will not because we don't believe that that is an area of adult education. And so we don't. We also want to know why-- if somebody wanted to, I'd have to ask, why do you want to do that? What is it to give them-- because they can't really articulate that and maybe people think they can, but why are they taking it to get experience being in a credit, like, let's just say, anthropology class, or I don't understand the reason. We don't, we wouldn't do it here at Mount SAC.

From the field, I've gotten these questions. Is this a fiscal strategy because you need more attendance in that class to keep it going? We actually have that issue going in one area, and we still keep to our seats. And that's a bigger college issue that we can't in non-credit solve with a mirrored class. And so that's a bigger conversation.

Are you trying to keep credit faculty load? Again, that isn't for us to determine. That's for the credit division to figure out. And so we've kind of had those conversations, but we've stayed away and said, that's not our purpose, and that's just us.

Repeatability for credit students in the areas outside. That's probably the biggest reason why I hear of people doing it is you have a music class, and you need people to practice for that ensemble or a performance. And we know what the reason is. And so we don't engage, and we say we have a three to five class seats, and that's what we're doing.

But in that class, we don't even do mirrored. We don't do any mirrored because it, from our perspective, does not meet the areas of adult ed. What people are doing, and I know this, and it's, again, your local decision, we are not the mirrored police. We are not telling you locally what to do at your college. It just needs to be what you all have as the interpretation of the code.

But you mirror an older adult class. This is the most common because it seems so easy to do that. You look at the description. It just says classes for older adult, and you say, OK, older adults come. We know that for the most part, they're not coming to a credit performing arts class. You might get one or two.

But we tend to do our older-adult classes in a way that contextualize things like the music or art and that is building on their critical thinking. Not to say that that class can't, but we also know that it's not-- older adult classes are specifically intended for older adults. That's the emphasis, although other people can come.

And then just the minimum calls for non-credit disciplines. I don't know if people are aware. I didn't until like six, seven years ago, but the minimum calls for non-credit disciplines are not with the Academic Senate. They are in ED code. Those and adults with disabilities or disabled students are in ED code.

And so the non-credit disciplines, when you create, let's say, an older-adult class and you merit with maybe a performing arts class, the older-adult discipline is what you need to meet. And so that's a consideration.

And then just what's your purpose for mirroring credit ESL? That is a conversation here. We have two classes before my time, and we are always-- so our faculty have said that it is for our level-six ESL students and our VESL students, Vocational ESL, to have some exposure to credit classes. We do not articulate them, and they are not transfer level. But I don't know that any-- we have one credit ESL class, that is, so.

But those are just questions that we want to pose to you when you do this. Again, it's not our call what you do at your college. You just have to take the ED codes. But the [inaudible] is a big help to give you a guidance on that. But it is locally determined, and you have to decide what's best. And I think that's the end of our slides.

So if you have questions for us, we can take those from you.

Dulce Delgadillo: Yeah, and I saw a great conversation happening in the chat. Thank you for Garrett for dropping in a valuable resource on some of the local policies that they have at the College of the Canyons. I don't know Garrett. I don't mean to put you on the spot, but if you want to share a little bit about that.

Madelyn Arballo: Yeah, Garrett is always welcome to chime in. And College of the Canyon, I have to say, does a great job with codifying their practices. We have not codified anything at Mount SAC and have not found the need to. But Garrett, thank you.

Audience: Yeah, sorry, I had my camera off. I rode my bike to campus today so not looking my best. Yeah, we created-- our student services side of the house really wanted us to have some sort of procedure or policy. Policy is a stretch. I'd say it's more of a procedure. It's not board approved or anything.

But our plan right now, because our list of mirrored classes is growing, is we want to create a website, one that's faculty and student facing, separate ones, to help support our credit faculty who are teaching the mirrored courses, as well as the students who are kind of navigating this process.

We were able to get it solidified into our credit for prior learning policy a couple of years ago that non-credit classes can be used to earn units later on. So I shared some of that language in the chat. And I think I also got roped into doing a presentation at the ACM. So yeah, feel free to reach out. My email is in the chat if anyone has any questions.

Dulce Delgadillo: Great, thank you so much, Garrett. And I see a hand. Manny, go for it.

Audience: OK, Good morning, everyone. My name is Dr. Manny Kang. I'm calling from College of Marin. So my question is, do you have a list of courses you mirrored in career technical education, subject like art program like, computer information system or business, something like that? Thank you.

Madelyn Arballo: I think we have a list someplace, and we could provide it to you all if you want that. That's no problem. Yeah, that's an easy one.

Le Foisia: Yes, Madelyn, we do. And I believe we do mirror both of those areas.

Madelyn Arballo: OK.

Le Foisia: Yes.

Madelyn Arballo: So we can get that--

Le Foisia: We just need to update it, yeah.

Audience: OK, no problem. If you can email to me, that will be helpful. Thank you.

Dulce Delgadillo: Yeah, Manny of you can either send us your-- well, actually, we should have your email.

Audience: Yeah, you do.

Dulce Delgadillo: Right, Chandni? OK, yeah, we'll have your email. Yeah, so we'll make sure to get that resource.

Audience: [inaudible] thank you.

Dulce Delgadillo: Perfect, great, thank you.

Audience: OK.

Dulce Delgadillo: All right. Andrenna, I see your hand.

Audience: Good morning. This was a very interesting presentation. What I'm still trying to understand, theoretically, non-credit courses are supposed to allow for a different type of assessment. Obviously, the grading is different. Non-credit courses are also supposed to have certain number of hours requirements.

So I'm still somewhat, let's just say, ambivalent about, if the pace of instruction, if the assessments are the same, if the expectation of performance in the class are the same, it seems to me that there is a bit of a, I guess, possible conflict between the purpose of non-credit and credit.

So I'm just trying to understand from an instructional pedagogical perspective, how the different requirements of what non-credit is supposed to achieve versus credit is addressed in this kind of environment. And if students are held to the same standards, then other than the financial aspect, obviously, and repeatability, then it seems we are not really necessarily looking at the purpose of non-credit itself to begin with. So I'm just trying to get a better sense from that angle. How is this reconciled in this format?

Madelyn Arballo: So, I think that's a great question, Dr. Serban I think we have gotten it ourselves from faculty who come into our mirrored world and didn't know their classes were mirrored because they're new, and they're like, why are we doing this? What's the purpose of this? What is-- but for us, the purpose is the pathway. It's a obvious pathway.

And because we focus so much on CTE, and we are also pushing the whole skill building, it's a perfect fit. In terms of the requirements, I have not heard from our faculty that our non-credit faculty can't hang or that it's not the same student. They're very similar in terms of abilities and stuff, so.

But, LE, maybe you have some thoughts?

Le Foisia: Yeah, I always see mirrored courses as an opportunity for access to students. And so I think that's an important piece to remember is the students may not have had access to these classes if not for the mirror. So that's first and foremost.

But then I think Renew is doing a really good job, as well. And I think Kevin is a great example. We really focus on managing the student's expectations, saying, this is a real privilege to be able to take this class in credit. And you're going to be held to the same expectations and standards that are listed in your syllabus. And the students really take that to heart, and they know that this is a great opportunity for them.

So I think we're doing a much better job of making sure that the student goes in prepared. And then now, my role is also to make sure that the faculty also know a little bit more about mirrored and what the course entails and how the logistics work of it. But I think that, in combination, has really helped the whole process is getting the credit faculty on board, as well as the student.

Dulce Delgadillo: Great, thank you, LE.

Le Foisia: Mm-hmm.

Dulce Delgadillo: Scott, I see your hand up.

Audience: Thank you. This is great. I really appreciate the information. We at SMC, Santa Monica College, have had a few mirrored courses already, and as you can imagine, everyone, every department chair, every faculty member wants mirroring everything. Sort of a fun house right Now, so trying to figure out how do we define for them, no, that's not OK?

I wonder if it might be helpful if there are any best practices or suggested practices that you've seen at Mount SAC, that you can pass on to the field about, there's no additional compensation for someone mirroring a class. Things like this, things that we can proactively communicate to folks before they propose things.

Because I know that we're going to have the question. I some of that stuff might be locally decided anyways, local control, but I wonder if there's anything you can share about some of the things you've learned along the way?

Madelyn Arballo: Yeah, for us, it's an interesting thing, as I would probably ask a newer college who's doing this to answer some of that. Because our culture here is that nobody has really ever questions it. We might get one question every two years from a new faculty, why am I doing two rolls, attendance rolls and things like that?

Because they have to enter it positive attendance every week. And that's kind of a pain, I think. But we don't get complaints about that. They're happy to have the students and the ability to mentor those students. And also, because we have so many going transition, they're seeing that as a feeder into their programs or credit programs.

But maybe another college can tell us how they've managed that. Because we don't have that issue here. And we have hundreds of mirrored classes. I saw Garrett offered.

Audience: Yeah, I can chime in just because I was on the phone with Madelyn a couple months ago, and we were actually talking about this.

Madelyn Arballo: I know we talk all the time about this.

Audience: So we are fairly new to mirroring, I'd say, in 2020 or so around the pandemic. And the way that we have it set up is we have a negotiated cap of 35 on our credit and non-credit classes. And so we do not go over that negotiated cap.

Typically, we'll set aside a certain number of seats. So if there are 35 with a lot of our classes, we do 5 to 10 seats for noncredit, and then 25 to 30 for the credit side. And then we monitor the enrollments as we lead up.

So if there's a waitlist, we actually end up getting waitlists a lot on the non-credit side and no waitlist on the credit side. So we end up transferring seats as needed leading up to the start of the course. And our credit faculty love it because it increases enrollment for their classes. And we've only had positive feedback about the performance of non-credit students, as well.

As far as the workload goes, as Madelyn said, the attendance accounting is probably the biggest difference and a little bit of extra work as well as submitting two separate sets of grades. But we do merge everything else. So if there's a Canvas shell involved, it gets merged with the credit class, the non-credit and credit. That way all the students are in one place, and they don't have to manage more than one thing.

So our faculty haven't pushed back at all. They get the same compensation as they would for a regular class, but there's really not a whole lot of extra work except for the attendance piece.

Madelyn Arballo: Yeah, and attendance, for us, we go and register all the students. So we don't put that on any of the faculty at all. But other schools might. So thank you, Garrett.

Dulce Delgadillo: Yeah, this is great. So we got, probably, about 10 more minutes, so we still got a little bit of time for some questions. And I also just want to say that there's some great questions and resources also in conversation in the chat, if you want to chime in there, as well. Amber, go for it.

Audience: Still muted, all right, thank you. Yeah, so I'm from College of the Redwoods, and we currently do not have any mirrored courses. And I'm over all of our non-credit and adult education. I'm the director over that.

And how are TL user calculated for our non-credit faculty at a different rate than our for credit faculty. So that was my question is, if there's a mirrored class, and there's two sections, different section numbers set up for that class, but they're getting paid for the full-credit rate is what I'm hearing. That's how other schools are doing this. You don't have them on two separate contracts.

Madelyn Arballo: No, we don't. We don't do that. And we can do an entire session on the credit load, credit, non-credit load and how that fits in together. But it has no bearing on their load and/or extra pay. There's no extra pay.

And like I said, for us, it's never been an issue. But no, it isn't figured into their noncredit. I mean as a for no-pay faculty as a no pay not loaded.

Audience: So really, so for that section, for the mirrored section, they don't have a contract attached to that. But then for the for-credit section, you have that listed at the full credit hour amount, and you're paying them based on that.

So they're getting paid for a full class of credit students, but half the class could be non-credit students.

Madelyn Arballo: go ahead and finish and then I'll address the whole half the class thing.

Audience: OK, and I understand that that's not a set number. And then my other question was, just with our non-credit, it's open entry, open exit. So then how does that work with-- I don't know. Doesn't sound like faculty are giving pushback. But I would imagine our faculty giving pushback about students coming in and out of their classes and adding at different points in the semester and things like that. Or is that not--

Madelyn Arballo: No, we don't do open entry, open exit in that. It's a managed enroll. It's done exactly like a credit enrollment attendance structure. For those classes, we do not do open entry and open exit, so.

Audience: OK, but obviously, it's still all positive attendance.

Madelyn Arballo: Yes, positive attendance. OK, and then just to address the whole 30 out of 40 seats, again, we don't have that issue here because we have agreed on the three to five, or one, or six, or whatever, which we don't usually go above five or even three sometimes.

But I don't know how you could address that because if it was us, like, one time, a lot of students wanted to take this, and we did a standalone. We did a standalone. More political on your campus, but that's how we handled it a few years ago. So OK.

Dulce Delgadillo: Great, all right, we got about five more minutes, Randy, go for it.

Audience: Yeah, real quick, I'm the Dean of CTE at De Anza College. And we only do mirrored CDCP non-credit. And our faculty union and the district agreed to treat CDCP as regular load, regular pay, regular everything. So we run a mirrored-- we actually give them letter grades, which of course, translates into pass, no pass at the end.

But a lot of the testing agencies, like in the real estate board, they want to see a grade with ours.

Madelyn Arballo: Yeah, you can do that.

Audience: Right, so we do all of that. We have A&R issues certificates and transcripts, but we only do CDCP, and the pay is the same. We don't deal with any of those kinds of issues.

Madelyn Arballo: Yeah, the only thing that when people ask me about the load, and again, this is a completely-- we could do an hour and a half on just that discussion of what people do. And the credit to noncredit load, when you're mixing those, just be very careful with your STRS contributions because the calculation is very different.

And so we've told people, I wouldn't want to be that person who ends up at the end of their career and the number of hours isn't-- but that's a completely different thing. But maybe just keep that in mind is the STRS contribution is different, so.

Dulce Delgadillo: Great, thank you. Maryanne.

Audience: Hi, friends. I'm so excited to see more than 100 people on this call. As non-credit grows, and in the context of some of the innovative things that are happening around vision 2030, I would offer that we get stuck sometimes thinking about very small details. And I want to plant the seed that we should think about the whole sequence of instructional design, and what we're really talking about in terms of scaffolding.

So in the past, we've had very strategic trainings. Both LE and I and others have talked about, what you want to look at is envisioning this bridge from marginalized communities, from the community through non-credit, into credit, into careers, into transitioning for full degrees and transfer. There is a place and a space for each of these different strategies in the communities that you serve. And it's very intentional with the instructional design that you have.

So, for example, the reason we mirror with entry-level CTC, or CTE CDCP certificates, is because it's entry, get them into work while they continue in their educational pathways. Because you don't want to really mirror a bigger CTC kind of pathway.