Title 5, Section 55204

In addition to the requirements of section 55002 and any locally established requirements applicable to all courses, district governing boards shall ensure that:

Any portion of a course conducted through distance education includes regular effective contact between instructor and students, through group or individual meetings, orientation and review sessions, supplemental seminar or study sessions, field trips, library workshops, telephone contact, correspondence, voice mail, e-mail, or other activities. Regular effective contact is an academic and professional matter pursuant to sections 53200 et seq.

Any portion of a course provided through distance education is conducted consistent with guidelines issued by the Chancellor pursuant to section 409 of the Procedures and Standing Orders of the Board of Governors.

Regular Effective Contact Guidelines

Establishing and maintaining regular effective contact is not only a Title 5 requirement but also a practice that facilitates student-centered instruction and increases the achievement of student learning outcomes. All Distance Education instructors at Cerritos College will implement regular effective contact using methods from each of the three categories below.

A. Faculty-Initiated Interactions

Begin class with instructor-guided introductions.
Design daily or weekly assignments and projects that promote collaboration among students
Pose questions in the discussion boards which encourage critical thinking skills and promote interaction among all course participants.
Participate regularly in discussion activities with students and ensure that discussions remain on topic. (Providing students with an open-ended question forum, although appropriate, does not constitute the entirety of effective instructor-initiated interaction.)
Create a specific forum for questions regarding course assignments.
Ask students for feedback about the course on a regular basis and revise content as needed.
Include means for varied types of interaction in the course design

B. Frequent & Timely Interactions

DE Courses must be the “virtual equivalent” to face-to-face courses.

Establish guidelines for frequency of contact that are the same as in the face-to-face classroom; at the very least, the number of instructor contact hours per week that would be available for face-to-face students, will also be available, in asynchronous and/or synchronous mode, with distance education students
Instructor contact with DE students must be distributed over the course of the instructional week and must occur as often as appropriate for the course.
Declare response time for student questions and assignment feedback (e.g. 24-48 hours with exception of weekends and holidays)
Maintain an active presence, particularly during the beginning weeks of a course
Give frequent and substantive feedback throughout the course

C. Clear Expectations for Interactions

Specify course policy in the syllabus regarding frequency and timeliness of all contact initiated by the instructor
Explain course policy regarding student-initiated contact (where to post questions, assignments, etc.) in the syllabus
Clarify important dates, such as assignment and assessment deadlines, not only in the beginning but also throughout the course
Specify course policy in the syllabus as to when and how (email, discussion board, etc.) students will receive feedback on assignments, grades, and participation.
Course activities and assignments promote student-instructor interaction. Student-to-student interaction is fostered when appropriate to the academic discipline.¹

ATTENDANCE REGULATION: This is related to Title IV HEA funding; in a face-to-face class, it is relatively easy to demonstrate that there has been “regular and substantive interaction between the students and faculty,” but it is much more difficult in an online course. Many distance education programs have grown accustomed to using the last date of log-in as the last day of attendance for a student, but the Department of Education now requires that there be “academically related activity,” not just attendance via log-in. The syllabus should spell out last day of attendance policies, and drop and withdrawal policies should be applied consistently.²

Tools for Regular Effective Contact

Interaction in the distance education classroom can be instructor-student, student-student, student-content and student-interface. Below are tools that may be used to implement regular effective contact.

Course Announcements (e.g., videos, weekly summary, weekly review)
Personalized Feedback
Discussion Boards (e.g., question and answer forums, VoiceThread)
Videoconferencing (e.g., ConferZoom , Skype, CCC Confer)
Collaborative Projects (e.g., group blogs, group discussions, wikis)
Instructor-Created Modules
Lectures (e.g., text-based, recorded, streaming, slides with audio narration)
Podcasts
Webinars
Screencasts
Virtual and/or On-Campus Office Hours
Email or Canvas-based Conversations (Inbox)
Private Messaging
Chat

It is suggested that Instructors should have a threaded discussion that is set aside for general questions about the course and may wish to have weekly or other timely, question and answer sessions available to students. This may also be accomplished through virtual office hours.

*Definition of E-Lecture: For the purposes of Regular Effective Contact, an e-lecture consists of the electronic delivery of original and course-related instructional content prepared by the instructor of a class and made available to students within the district course management system. E-lectures may be delivered in a variety of formats, including text-only content pages, posted documents, transcripted audio recordings with or without synchronized slides, and captioned video recordings.

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¹ Adapted from BSC Quality Online Course Rubric, with materials from Distance and Distributed Education (DDE), Online Learning at UWG: Five Star Rubric for Online Instruction, 2009 University of West Georgia

² Lorenzetti, J. (2013). Three Distance Educations Regulations – Are You in Compliance?. Faculty Focus. Retrieved 28 July 2014, from http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/distance-learning/three-distance-ed...

Regular Effective Contact Policy Adapted from the Policies of Long Beach City College, Saddleback College, and Victor Valley College.