DECT
Distance Education Captioning and Transcription
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Distance
Education Captioning and Transcription (DECT) grant?
The DECT represents a commitment by the California Community
Colleges to expand access to distance education to all students.
Further, DECT provides a means for colleges to promote faculty
innovation in the use of audio, video, and multi-media content in
distance learning classes. The system’s substantial support for DECT
is also a recognition that distance learning is the fastest growing
segment of CCC enrollment. Funding has been authorized by the
Chancellor’s Office to aid California community colleges in
improving their capacity to serve disabled student populations and,
in some instances, the general public, by ensuring the accessibility
of aural information. Services will be provided to colleges through
a process whereby the grantee contracts with outside captioning
vendors to provide assistance to any community college that elects
to use these vendors as well as establish policies and procedures to
reimburse colleges that contract these services directly with a
captioning vendor not under contract.
Why do you need this funding?
- To ensure student access
- To support faculty innovation
- To support mission-critical technological advancement
- To comply with federal and state legal requirements
Can we purchase video content with this funding?
- Funding is available for captioning of videos that are already owned and can be used with telecourses.
- Funding is not available for purchase of new videos with captions that can be used with telecourses.
- Funding is not available for purchase of new videos without captions that can be used with telecourses.
- Funding is not available for captioning of new videos if they do not already contain captions.
Who is eligible for funding?
California Community Colleges offering distance education classes,
for either live or asynchronous captioning and transcription.
What counts as a distance education class
for the purposes of DECT funding?
For practical purposes, this means that a class offered fully online or telecourse qualifies as distance education. (Online and telecourse formats are used here as examples—distance learning can take many formats.) For a hybrid class, though, one needs to consider the percentage of hours that are offered via distance and on-campus/face-to-face. For a hybrid class to qualify as distance education for the purposes of DECT funding, at least 51% of the hours of instruction must be offered via distance.
Are community education or community extension classes
eligible?
The DECT grant does not cover community
services/continuing education material. The DECT covers
apportionment generating classes only--credit, non-credit, but not
no-credit. Here is language from a
legal opinion from the state Chancellor's office regarding the use
of DSP&S funds for community services:
"The State funds Disabled Student Programs and Services (DSP&S) to offset the direct excess cost to community college districts of providing such services. However, DSP&S funds can only be used to serve students with disabilities who are enrolled in State supported activities. Therefore, support services for students with disabilities who are enrolled in community services must be funded from student fees or other college resources. While the need for accommodations should be assessed on an individual basis, it may be advisable to establish general policies and procedures for providing support services to students with disabilities in community services programs."
What type of funding is
available?
The Distance Education Captioning and Transcription
(DECT) program has two funding processes in place—Payment
Method A and Payment Method B.
Payment Method A
Payment Method A is the process currently available.
That is, the college pays the vendor directly and the grant
reimburses the college.
We
require that you email/fax us the
Application and Agreement form along with the Additional Project
Courses page(s) (if captioning is for more than one class) and a
vendor quote. Once
signatures are in place, we will email back copies with a Project #
indicating that the request for funding has been granted.
After the captioning/transcription services have been completed
and paid for, email/fax the
Request for Reimbursement/Payment form with the following
documentation:
1.
A
copy of the vendor’s invoice with Applicant District’s approval
initials by each charge satisfactorily completed
2.
A copy of the Purchase Order and/or contract issued, when
applicable, to Vendor
3.
A
copy of the Applicant District’s payment check to Vendor.
Payment Method B
Payment Method B involves a pre-approved vendor list that will be
posted at the Foundation for Community Colleges website.
Once the list is in place the colleges can use vendors from
this list for captioning/transcription work and we will pay the
vendors directly through the grant funds.
We
require that you email/fax us the
Application and Agreement form along with the Additional
Project Courses page (if captioning is for more than one class) and
a vendor quote. Once
signatures are in place, we will email back copies with a Project #
indicating that the request for funding has been granted.
After the captioning/transcription services have been completed, the
vendor will email the invoice directly to us.
We will then email the invoice to the college and ask that
each charge satisfactorily completed be initialed and then
emailed/faxed back to us with the
Request for Reimbursement/Payment form within five (5)
business days of receipt of invoice.
What
kind of reporting do you need to do?
We
request that you fill out the
End of
Term Report form at the end of the semester.
We would like to track the outcomes of this funding.
Accordingly, we ask that you provide us with two sets of data
from the classes served.
-
The number of students enrolled in
the class(es) at the start of the term and the number of
students enrolled in the class(es) at the end of the term.
-
Student retention and success rates
in the class(es).