TSTC PBE Policies

IDS focuses on the following TSTC Standard Operating Procedures: 

• ES 2.20 Distance Education

• ES 1.01 Intellectual Property

• ES 2.11 Copyright Compliance

• ES 1.06 Academic Freedom and Responsibility

• ES 3.26 Students with Disabilities

The Subscription Rate allows full-time students (12 credits or more) to take additional courses within the same semester without paying more tuition. In order to take advantage of this, the student must complete and pass all four original courses, and register for the additional course at least five weeks prior to the end of the semester. The student must also have instructor approval in order to sign up for the subscription rate course. While it is possible for a student to register for multiple additional courses under the Subscription Rate, the student must complete and pass each additional course one at a time. 

Acceleration is available to full-time and part-time students. What acceleration refers to is students progressing through and completing their course(s) before the semester ends. Part-time students can accelerate, complete their courses, and register for additional courses as well. However, part-time students are not eligible for the subscription tuition benefit. They will be billed at their regular designated tuition rate.  

Acceleration is subject to instructor availability and may not be available on all campuses. 

The lab attendance policy is decided at the program level. While we cannot grade on attendance, we can use course design to guide students to good lab attendance practices. When writing this policy, consider the following questions:

• What would the student experience on the job?

• Would they be expected to show up on time? 

• Would there be a penalty for being late or missing a certain number of workdays days (especially without giving notice)?

The specific guidelines should be discussed with program leadership. Feel free to reach out to your PBE design team with questions.

In PBE, weighted grading is only assigned to Mastery Assessments, with the recommendation that they each be given equal weight. For example, if the course has five Mastery Assessments, each would be assigned 20% of the final grade. 

Check For Understanding, labs, Practice and Apply activities may be assigned points to show a student's level of understanding, but those activities will have a weight of 0% in the final course grade. 

Students must pass each Mastery Assessment with a grade of 80% or higher in order to move onto the next module/content. Students will not be able to access material in the next module until the current Mastery Assessment is passed successfully. 

The final course grade is averaged using all Mastery Assessments once all are completed; however, a student will automatically fail the course if all Mastery Assessments are not passed with an grade of 80% or higher. 

For example, say a course has five Mastery Assessments. The student passes the first four with 100% each and then decides to skip the final Mastery Assessment. While the average of all five would traditionally work out to an 80% for the final course grade, PBE requires that students pass every Mastery Assessment with an 80% or higher to pass the course. In this situation, the student would fail the course. 

For further details, you can review the Mastery Assessment Guidelines.

SACSCOC (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools) - Distance Education and Correspondence Courses

THECB (Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board) - Distance Education Resources