SPOT Certification for Fall 2021
General Information
Faculty assigned to teach an online or hybrid class in Fall 2021 semester will need to be SPOT certified or complete an approved alternative to SPOT by June 30. Faculty who submitted their SPOT courses for SPOT certification by June 1 will be notified by July 1 if they are SPOT certified.
Faculty who are not SPOT certified by June 30 and are scheduled to teach online or hybrid classes this fall will need to work with their department chair and dean to modify their fall teaching assignment/schedule.
Faculty who are in the SPOT review process will receive email messages from the SPOT Review Team, and faculty are encouraged to check their Mt. SAC email daily and respond promptly to facilitate forward momentum to completion.
Faculty who submitted their SPOT course after June 1 may not meet the June 30 certification deadline for all. Their SPOT course will be in the queue for review, and the SPOT review team will get to them as they can.
Status of SPOT Review
While the reviewers are happy to answer questions about the status of reviews, time spent answering email is time not spent on reviews. Please be judicious in reaching out to reviewers with questions about reviews.
The SPOT Review Team is working on an unprecedented, high volume of submitted SPOT courses.
Faculty who submitted their SPOT course by June 1 will have received an acknowledgement email message from Catherine McKee. This email will have contained your pre-check revisions, if any.
There is no simple or easy way to ascertain individual faculty member’s status. To answer questions about their SPOT review status, i.e., “how close am I to getting SPOT certified by June 30?”, the reviewers would have to stop what they’re working on (your course or another faculty member’s course), open and go through your entire SPOT course, check against the rubric, check your responses to areas that needed correction, and then reply to you.
Therefore, please be patient as you await your feedback from your official reviewer (not the input you may have received from Catherine McKee when you initially submitted your course). Five reviewers are working hard to get through submissions! Once you have received feedback from your reviewer, you can certainly ask questions! But please be patient as we busily review over 100 courses.
For general inquiries, please contact Dr. Meghan Chen, Dean, Library, Learning Resources, and Distance Learning at mchen@mtsac.edu or (909) 274-5888.
Advisory on the SPOT Course Review Process
If the submitted SPOT course does not pass the pre-check, then it is sent back for further work. This has already been done for all courses submitted by the June 1 deadline. If you received any initial feedback from Catherine please make requested revisions right away so they will be complete once your official review starts.
SPOT courses that pass the pre-check are assigned to a reviewer who will email the faculty member with feedback on areas that need to be addressed. This will start after spring semester finals week.
The sooner and more productive the faculty response to the reviewers’ emails, the more likely the SPOT course moves forward to certification. Responses that do not address the reviewers’ feedback are less productive in the process and take away time from the reviewers.
Examples of productive responses are:
- Making the revision and noting its specific location (if necessary) in the "Faculty Comments" column of the returned SPOT rubric.
- Specifically directing the reviewer to a task she/he/they couldn't find in the review.
- Addressing any requested accessibility issues such as finding accurately captioned videos, adding appropriate alt tags, or revising headings.
Common characteristics in unproductive responses are:
- No response to reviewer's email about deficiencies in their SPOT course.
- Lack of effective responses to areas that need correction.
- Failure to specifically tell the reviewer where to find the revision or addition.
- Argument over the revision, such as "Why must I do this?" or "My other college doesn't make me do this."
- "I don't know how to do this in Canvas." Please contact the Faculty Facilitators right away: FacFac@mtsac.edu
Advisory on @ONE Courses as Alternates for SPOT Certification
Faculty who completed an approved @ONE course by June 30, 2021, will meet that deadline. Completion data from @ONE is used to verify these faculty members’ status.
Faculty who may be enrolled in an approved @ONE course will not reach completion (i.e., certification) by June 30 due to the courses’ schedule to end on or after August 22. Therefore, the only way to meet this deadline is through SPOT certification by June 30.
| Contact | For Help With | |
|---|---|---|
| Faculty Facilitators | Using and navigating Canvas | FacFac@mtsac.edu |
| Dr. Meghan Chen | General questions about SPOT certification for Fall 2021 | mchen@mtsac.edu |
| Catherine McKee | SPOT review process | cmckee@mtsac.edu |
