For fully online courses, the Koehler Center will leverage the Course Access Report to provide an overview of activity and engagement in the course.
Successful online courses will have a high and sustained level of faculty and student presence. Faculty engagement during the first month of the course is especially important in order to establish a personal rapport in the course. Early in the course is also a good time for instructors to make sure that students’ expectations are aligned with the desired level and type of engagement in the course shell and the departmental / program outcomes for the course.
We are aware that internship, clinical/practicum, or project/thesis courses may have different departmental purposes and expectations.
Online courses at TCU are subject to several overlapping sets of regulations. In addition to the TCU Online Course Delivery Policy, online courses and programs at TCU are to follow the best practices identified in the SACSCOC guidelines for distance learning. Multiple provisions stress the importance of interaction between faculty and students, including prompt responses from faculty, timely provision of feedback on student work, and interactive elements in the course (section 2e). TCU’s participation in the State Authorization and Reciprocity Agreement also requires that our online courses support student-student and faculty-student interaction as well as that the learning environment is characterized by “active faculty contribution” (section 4). Furthermore, federal financial aid rules require that students in distance education courses have regular and substantive interactions with faculty. TCU is committed to delivering the high-quality learning experience promised to the student and maintaining compliance with our accrediting bodies and state and federal law.