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Regular & Substantive Contact

Regulations

Regular and substantive instructor-student and student-student interaction is required in all online courses (this includes 100% online and hybrid). Research has shown that online courses with high levels of social interaction have a positive impact on learning.

Click the links below to familiarize yourself with regulations about regular and substantive interaction in online courses. You will also find examples and best practices for incorporating regular effective contact in your course.

Title 5

 of California Education Code requires distance education courses to have regular and substantive interaction between instructor and students (and among students if described in the syllabus or course outline of record or distance education addendum)*.

*Please Note: Title 5 has been amended multiple times in the past few years to match federal guidelines.  Some changes have included the phrase among students to require student-student interaction in addition to instructor-student interaction and more recently changing it to regular and substantive  has more details about the among students  update to Title 5.

ACCJC

 requires distance education courses to have regular and substantive interaction between the students and the instructor. Read  to learn more about the four elements that guide regular and substantive interaction.  (go to page 103) by the ACCJC is a guide for evaluating distance education. The ACCJC lists three specific ways:

  1. Be consistent and predictable.
  2. Be faculty-initiated.
  3. Be more than just a boilerplate assessment of student work.
Federal Regulations

ACCJCs definition of distance education above mirrors  and the federal . The Department of Education also provided a  clarifying some of the regulations.

ASCCC

 recommends that colleges develop regular and effective contact policies and  providing guidance on professional standards for educational practices in online education. These are from 2018, but are still the most current information from the ASCCC.

Examples

Below you will find examples of instructor-student and student-student interaction. You do not need to incorporate all the examples below. They are intended as a suggested guide and may vary by discipline or instructional design.  You can also find information in the . A summary is below.

Welcome Email or Video
  • Ideally, a welcome email or video is emailed to students before the class begins to promote early engagement and set the tone for the course.  posts all of their Welcome Letters online, so check them out for examples.
  • Some instructors send more than one pre-semester communication to create multiple touchpoints with students before the class begins.
First Day or Week of Course Check-in Assignment
  • Examples: a discussion forum with a self-introduction, icebreaker, internet scavenger hunt, etc.
  • A first day or week check-in assignment also helps determine non-participation for census roster reporting
Video Conferencing via Big Blue Button or Zoom
  • Examples: use for office hours, exam review sessions, lectures, student presentations, group projects, guest speakers, virtual field trips, etc.
Customized Front Page
  •  to post engaging content and important information about your course.
  • Canvas has some .
  • Here are some examples of .
  • Thank you to Teacher Winters for fun  (just make sure to include alt text for accessibility).
Discussion Boards and Interactive Videos
  • Instructor moderated discussions
    • Equity Tip: Consider creating a system to track which students you respond to in the forum each week to ensure every student gets at least one response from you throughout the term. You can create an Excel spreadsheet to track responses or divide your roster into groups (i.e. alphabetically by last name group #1 is A-F, group #2 is G-L, etc.) and respond to each group in intervals
  • Q&A board where instructors or fellow students answer questions
  • Use  to quiz students on content in real time (practice or graded), real-time questions, check for understanding, and check for participation.
Weekly Announcements
  • Create written,  announcements
  • Can be used to preview, summarize, or clarify course content
  • Post announcements with links to relevant articles or videos about course content
Individual Contact with Students via E-mail, Phone, or Video
  • Sign up for a  and forward calls to any phone number
  • Sign up for a  for video conferencing
  • Consider responding to student emails/messages in Canvas with an  to personalize the response
Facilitating Student-to-Student Contact
  • Learn how to  in Canvas for small group projects, assignments, or presentations
  • Learn how to  and create peer review assignments in Canvas
  • Use Zoom or Conferences to facilitate group projects or presentations
Timely and Individualized Feedback on Student Work
  •  in SpeedGrader
  •  in SpeedGrader

Note: If you are using a publisher 3rd party website that only allows for automatically graded assignments, this should be supplemented with assignments in Canvas that allow you to give individualized, thorough feedback. When possible, course activity and interaction should be kept in Canvas for documentation. Automatically graded assignments do not count as regular and substantive feedback according to the regulations. Please refer to  assignments.

If youd like to add additional examples to this list, please email Distance Education Coordinators Judy Wong  (jwong@peralta.edu) or Laurie Allen-Requa (lallenrequa@peralta.edu)