Has there been consideration for increasing the number of honorariums available per month from 4 to 6? There are quite a few requests for additional classes, specifically for woodshop and laser.
I would add 2 more classes to the schedule each month if the honorarium level was increased.
Any ideas?
This does sound like a good idea. The original idea was to increase the number of teachers, but with Cov19, the numbers of people willing to teach has decreased. And class size is limited. But the numbers who want instruction seem to be strong.
The problem with this is based on experience. We had to pull back last year due to the amount of $ bring bled into the honorarium system and there was a huge blowback. So let’s say we add more now but a year from now we need to tap the breaks again. Blowback and sentiments that the board is anti teacher. I’m no longer on the board but don’t think this is a good way to go right now.
On the other side of the same coin, we’ve established that the program has its limits versus the complete free-for-all we previously had. I think now that we’ve adjusted to not expect being able to throw up unlimited classes because it’s pricey, we won’t see the same level of blowback.
That’s my 2c at least. I think we’d have more value out of enabling it for classes hosted online, since some teachers cannot teach in person currently since either they or a family member are at risk. Things like hot process safety are good ones to do online.
I would love to see it offered for online classes. If there was a way for teachers to send a copy of a class video for auditing purposes and then the ability to teach it freely or something. Online is definitely a bonus during this time and even my company did a paint and sip with staff recently where they sent out supplies beforehand.
Unforunately we’re loosing native Google Meet recordings, though it’s not too difficult to setup OBS to record the meeting for you.
I require that the attending members in my online safety have their webcams for the same reason we teach it as instructor led rather than a video. Ensure people are attentive and not just skipping though. With Moodle getting an upgrade if the AD integration works right we can look at doing it as an exam there.
Completely agree online should be an option if it makes sense. There are a lot of classes that are mainly demo learning, or software. I like @hon1nbo idea of requiring a webcam to ensure student is paying attention. Woodshop could hold the first part of CNC this way, with a socially distanced in person checkout. Digital Media could hold classes on Adobe such as Photoshop or Premiere with distance learning.
We pulled back drastically. I believe the real question is, what have we budgeted for training classes?
I’m living in Austin, but I’ve kept my membership and would gladly teach online classes. I miss almost everything about DMS, especially teaching.
If there were a significant number of people using the four that are currently available, there wouldn’t be an issue with training- but there aren’t, for some perfectly understandable reasons.
Increasing from 4 to 6 maybe nets an additional 6-8 total class a month at this point. That’s not enough benefit to make it worthwhile in my opinion.
Regarding online classes, this board has said time and time and time and time and time again that we are very open to the idea of being able to do honorarium for online classes but we’re not going to write a blank check for it. Until someone comes forward and demonstrates that it can be done effectively, it’s hard to write policy that works. There have been no proposals, there have been no committees or members that have come forward with a path forward on this issue.
I’m optimistic that the streaming cart may help once it’s up and running.
I was under the impression that the board was going to put forward a proposal for changes to the honorarium? This sounds like you’re asking the membership to put forward a proposal instead?
Lots of members… teachers, of which we have precious few right now, have made requests for honorarium changes. I think we were all under the impression that the leadership would hear those needs and address them.
To me this is the opposite of how I would interpret that data. There’s not enough classes being held, only a few people are offering classes, and they’re willing to offer more if the rules were changed. If there were more people maxing out the limit, there wouldn’t be as much of a need to change the limit because more classes were being held.
I mean there was a proposal: https://talk.dallasmakerspace.org/t/bod-agenda-20200608-online-class-honorarium/73292
I had proposed to do it with Google Meet, use recording and/or enforce the logins to validate attendance.
I don’t recall the meeting well enough for the specific issues the board did not like about that; it was a busy meeting.
If the board wants proposals and they’re going to just be shot down, they need to put forward what they want out of said proposals.
The streaming cart provides hardware sure, but the software is the same as what was already proposed. The only real difference is space provided hardware versus teacher provided hardware.
Without better guidance onto what concerns the board has that were not met with the prior proposal, or specific things they want in the proposal, it’s going to just be blind submissions for agenda items.
I’ll say the same thing I said to you in that meeting. We’d like to see it work once before we write a policy.
I don’t see a compelling case for honorarium changes. I see a compelling case for committees to encourage teachers.
And the same thing I’ve said before I’ll say again, the classes have already been taught. They went well.
What more is wanted here? You say “see it work” but despite classes having been held online before it
wasn’t enough.
You need to stated what exactly is desired when we had classes, a proposal was put forward, and it was denied.
I don’t know what this means.
You were told during The board meeting in which you put forward a proposal to open up online classes to honorarium with absolutely no restriction that we weren’t going to do that. You were also told during that meeting that if you wanted to put forward a proposal as to how it would work and how it could work that we would be very open to that possibility. You never did that. You may have taught an online class, honestly I don’t know because if you did you didn’t involve any of the board members in that discussion. Or set it up as an example of how it can work. Or anything else. You did what you always do which is to run off by yourself and without any collaboration, and now you’re coming back saying it has worked it does work, etc.
Thing is, that’s just not how we’re going to do this.
I’ve already noted I’m hazy on the meeting since it was a long one and a while back now, so I’m gonna break this down with the circular logic that’s not making sense to me.
I proposed it be auditable by requiring recordings or enforcing g suite logins since that’s trackable attendance. You still have yet to say what was wrong with how that could work, or what would be considered an acceptable “how it would work.” It was literally in the agenda item, and the agenda item was put forth because of the tested out class that metal shop tried.
I never suggested no restrictions (I in fact had suggested we require the attendance validation), but the board hasn’t stated what concerns were present that they want specifically in the proposal.
I literally proposed what worked in the class; Google meet and record it for audit capability.
I’ve been pushing for online teaching since we shut down, I enabled teachers to be able to do so, and I hosted classes.
I brought up in the meeting it does work because we ran it since I personally didn’t care about taking honorarium myself.
You still have yet to answer the question.
The board was given a proposal, it was noted that the online instructor led format worked well for the class sampled (hot process safety), and the board has still not put forth what exactly they’re looking for in a proposal since that apparently was not enough.
Yet you won’t say what you want in a proposal; you can say that’s not how we’re doing this, but you’re not saying how we are doing it.
Lol. You’ve got a gift for effective advocacy. As usually happens, I’m not going to engage in the battle of who can write the fastest novel on talk.
To all others following the thread: if you are interested in earning an honorarium for an online class, email or talk to a board member with what you have in mind. We are very interested in working collaboratively to determine a rubric that works.
Way to move the goalpost, just answer the question of what the board wants in a proposal.
@skyspook @mrjimmy @BobTheMad @Julie-Harris any of you care to answer the question since Brad refuses to?
I would suggest that whatever requirements apparently fit your personal definition of a proposal be public, since apparently they’re restrictive in some way that the membership at large is not aware of.