Fully Online Course Data Reporting Protocol

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.

• 12-day Reminder: The Koehler Center will send online instructors information about how to access the Course Overview widget so that they can review engagement in their course.
• Final Course Reporting: Reports from the Course Overview Widget are included in the information that department chairs / program directors receive upon the completion of the term. After the term ends, the Koehler Center will generate Course Access reports for students and instructors as well as Tool Access reports for students and instructors for the duration of the course. This is the same data that instructors can pull from their own course shells using the Course Access report and Tool Access report options and applying date and user role filters.
  In addition, the Koehler Center will provide department chairs / program directors information about instructor usage (course metrics) for instructors in their department. For courses that will receive an OSAT, the Koehler Center will also provide department chairs / program directors detailed student-level usage data with identifying student information redacted.  This TCU Online information should be combined with other course data, such as retention rates, SPOTS, and the OSAT (Online Structure Analysis Tool) report to provide department chairs / program directors with a robust view of the online course. Instructors will be notified when department chairs / program directors have been provided with the TCU Online reports and the OSAT reports; instructors can then consult with department chairs / program directors to view data for their own courses.

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.