Student Engagement

Faculty for online courses are required to maintain an interactive online presence in the class four days during each class week. Your active participation in chats, forums and discussions throughout the course is directly related to the documentation and calculation of AIE (instructional time required by the Pennsylvania Department of Education).

• Respond to all student inquiries within 24-48 hours.

• Do not be absent from the online classroom for more than two (2) consecutive days. Should an extended absence be needed (in case of emergency, travel, etc.), faculty should create an announcement to the class using the LMS indicating the absence period to prevent confusion or frustration on their part. If CAPS faculty will be absent from the course shell for longer than three (3) days of a given week, should alert Tina Floyd. CGS faculty should alert Karen Necker.

• Provide regular feedback during forums, discussion and or chat sessions. Critical success factors for retention in online courses include student-student interaction, faculty-student interaction and, most importantly, feedback from faculty. Please be aware that students can view the last day and time the faculty members were in the course under the participants tab.

• Regular positive, and specific feedback to your students in chats, forums and discussions is a required faculty responsibility for teaching online courses at IU. Faculty participation in discussion forums is paramount to the facilitator-student engagement within the course. It is imperative that the facilitator’s voice is present within each thread; that presence may look different based on course content and the nature of the overall discussion. Please refer to the discussion forum best practices on the Faculty Hub (under Academic Resources).

• Promptly evaluate, grade, and return all written assignments and respond to discussion posts within three (3) days of the assignment due date. Follow the grading criteria indicated in the syllabus and be sure to provide specific feedback on the graded items, Post grades for weekly assessments in the Moodle grade book.

• Promptly evaluate, grade, and return the final paper/projects – with written feedback - to students in the Moodle course shell within five (5) days of course conclusion. NOTE: if teaching a course over a full semester or in the second part of a given term, grades may be due at an earlier date. If so, adjust your final grading timeline accordingly.