2.1 Online Best Practices

As an online instructor, you may hear things like "clearing your roster" early in the semester and reporting the "last date of attendance" when a student drops.

Clearing your course roster and dropping students who aren't participating will open space for others to be added and start the class without being too far behind. Be wary of inactive students who do not participate in your courses early in the semester, as these student accounts have the potential of being used for financial aid fraud.

Attendance for distance education consists of further substantive actions of the student demonstrating engagement in an academically related activity. Student activity such as only logging onto the online class (Canvas) is not sufficient to meet academic attendance standards. Federal financial aid regulations (see p. 5-65) state that: Links to an external site.

In a distance education context, documenting that a student has logged into an online class is not sufficient, by itself, to demonstrate academic attendance by the student. A school must demonstrate that a student participated in class or was otherwise engaged in an academically related activity, such as by contributing to an online discussion or initiating contact with a faculty member to ask a course-related question.

Examples of acceptable evidence of academic attendance and attendance at an academically related activity in a distance education program include:

•       student submission of an academic assignment,
•       student completion of an assessment or exam,
•       student completion of a quiz,
•       student participation in an interactive discussion,
•       student participation in an interactive tutorial, live streaming meeting, or other interactive computer-assisted instruction,
•       student participation in a study group, group project, or online discussion that is assigned by the institution,
•       student interaction with the instructor about academic matters, and
•       communication from the student or other documentation showing that the student-initiated contact with a faculty member to ask a question about the academic subject studied in the course.

It is recommended that many instructors require participation in an introductory discussion forum or completion of a syllabus quiz within the first few days of class and drop students who do not participate.

Upon withdrawal of a student or drop of a student. The instructor will be responsible to report and determine the last time a student had completed any of the academically related activities listed prior. For more details on the process visit the Faculty Resource Handbook Links to an external site. (Section D) and Administrative Procedure 5070 Links to an external site. for the definitions of college class attendance at the SDCCD.

Instructors are also required to manage an attendance policy for their online classes. This policy can be flexible to suit the needs of the course and students, but should be clear to what constitutes attendance, regular substantive contact requirements, and equity-mindedness.

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In an online course, students must do more than just login to demonstrate participation. Students should be required to perform activities that demonstrate meaningful participation, such as posting in discussion threads, submitting assignments, and taking quizzes. Here are examples of how to implement student authentication strategies and academic integrity in your online classes:

• Require written work from students on a weekly basis (discussions, assignments, and/or essays).
• Ask students to critique each other’s drafts of papers on the discussion forum or via email.
• Use a variety of assessments, for example, quizzes, projects, portfolios, or group work.
• Use a plagiarism detection tool and make the plagiarism reports available to students.

Students are expected to uphold honest academic conduct for all distance education courses and should adhere to the SDCCD AP 3100.3 Links to an external site. which defines cheating, plagiarism, and possible academic and administrative sanctions for any breaches of student academic integrity.

Strategies to Increase Academic Integrity are shown below. Guides to change most of the options can be found by visiting Canvas Quiz Options. Links to an external site.

• Availability Window– Restrict the availability of the test to a specific date/time range. 

• Time Limits– Limit the time a student can spend on a test once they start it. 

• Disallow Multiple Attempts– Multiple attempts is a great option for a “mastery” quiz where you want students to retake it until they achieve a certain level of proficiency; this isn’t typical of a summative, high-stakes assessment. 

• Answer Randomization– Answers to multiple-choice questions can be randomized/shuffled so they are presented differently for different students. (Note: In Quizzes this is one setting for the entire quiz; in New Quizzes this is a per-question setting.) 

• Present Questions One at a Time Links to an external site.– This can make it more difficult for students to “collaborate” if questions are also randomized. An additional option can prevent students from going back to previous questions, which can further strengthen the integrity of the exam but can also frustrate students who legitimately realize they made a mistake on a previous question and wish to correct it.

Shuffle Questions (New Quizzes only) – This will present the quiz questions to students in random order. 

Question Randomization with a Question Group/Item Bank Links to an external site.– Drawing questions randomly from a pool (or pools) can make it even more difficult for students to productively share questions during an exam. Keep in mind that if your pool contains more questions than the number of questions you are drawing from the pool to go into the exam, you need to be careful about maintaining consistency of the questions within the pool (both in terms of outcomes measured and difficulty of the questions). 

Calculated (Formula) Questions– Formula questions can include a range of values for one term/variable. Thus, the same question will have unique answers across different quizzes, but the question can still be auto-graded. 

Require Presentation of ID– if you are not using a physical proctoring center, but you would like students to demonstrate that the person taking the test is the person enrolled in your class, one suggestion is to have students record a brief video holding a picture ID next to their face. You could add an Essay question that directs students to access their webcam through the Rich Content Editor and record this. Of course, this requires students to have a webcam (and still wouldn’t prevent the student from doing this, then having someone else complete the rest of the exam). 

Authentic Assessment- Fosters active learning through students doing something to demonstrate knowledge. Check out the authentic assessment guide Links to an external site.

Courses that require webcams, disclosed in the class schedule and syllabi, can also use Zoom session with students that allow for the sharing of computer screens with visual confirmation of the student.

Thank you to Jim Julius at MiraCosta on which this guide was adapted.

Instructors help decide what tools will be used within their courses. Instructors should clearly communicate permitted tools and any restrictions. Clearly communicating expected student use of tools and support helps ensure academic integrity. To ensure that your students’ use of tools aligns with your learning goals, consider updating your academic integrity policy to clarify how students are permitted to engage with the tools and how they should signal that it has been used.

Please refer to the Sample Syllabus for additional guidance that includes an allowed, conditional, and not allowed scenario. To download a copy of this syllabus from Canvas Commons Links to an external site. for your course, visit Canvas Commons and search for the key phrase, “Sample Syllabus_DE Handbook” (Author: Liesl Boswell).

For additional guidance, learn how to download content from Canvas Commons Links to an external site..

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• 1 Hour

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools 

From the Sample Syllabus:

Option 1: (Allowed) 

Students can use advanced automated tools (artificial intelligence or machine learning tools such as ChatGPT or Dall-E) when noted for assignments in this course if it is properly documented and credited. For example, text generated using ChatGPT should include a citation such as: “Chat-GPT. (YYYY, Month DD of query). “Text of your query.” Generated using OpenAI. https://chat.openai.com/Links to an external site.” Material generated using other tools should follow a similar citation convention. 

Critical Evaluation: Be aware that the information derived from these AI tools is often inaccurate or incomplete. Students must critically evaluate the output of AI tools, considering potential biases and limitations, and corroborate information obtained from AI tools with other credible sources. 

Option 2: (Conditional)  

Students are allowed to use generative AI such as ChatGPT, Dall-E 2, CoPilot) on assignments in this course if instructor permission is obtained in advance. Unless given permission to use those tools, each student is expected to complete each assignment without substantive assistance from others, including automated tools. 

Option 3: (Not Allowed) 

Use of an AI Generator such as ChatGPT, MidJourney, DALL-E, etc. is explicitly prohibited unless otherwise noted by the instructor.  Additionally, be aware that the information derived from these tools is often inaccurate or incomplete. It’s imperative that all work submitted should be your own. Any assignment that is found to have been plagiarized or to have used unauthorized AI tools may receive a zero and/or be reported for academic misconduct. 

Option: Additional Examples  

This Syllabi Policies for gAI ToolsLinks to an external site. resource is a crowd-sourced public document from other educators who have offered to share their policies. This resource contains discipline-specific examples that can be sorted by course and discipline. 

 

 

Fully online or partially online courses undergo the same curriculum review and approval process as do face-to-face courses. For a course to be approved for distance education delivery, the distance education curriculum undergoes a separate review that requires the curriculum originator to input the following distance education-specific information into the Continuing Education Distance Education Addendum or credit colleges’ CurricUNET Links to an external site.
(https://www.curricunet.com/sdccd/ Links to an external site.)

Techniques used to ensure quality: List the techniques you will use to ensure that the same standards of course quality will be applied to the distance education course as to the face-to-face course.

Evaluation Method: Describe how you will evaluate whether the students taking this course have achieved the learning outcomes as specified in the course objectives.

Additional Resources: Specify the additional resources, materials, and/or information that may be necessary for you to provide to a diverse student population, including students with disabilities, to ensure the standards of course quality and student success are achieved.

• Board Policy 3306 Links to an external site. for Course Materials Adoption and Procurement:
• Guidelines for Required Instructional Materials Links to an external site. in the California Community Colleges
• WebAim Links to an external site.

ADA Statement:

Distance education techniques used in this course will be accessible to individuals with disabilities (Sections 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act). Requests for technology accommodations will be met by working with the Adaptive Technology Specialist to ensure compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Contact Type: Define the types of contact between the instructor and students, and among students and the frequency of each contact type.

Once approved by the Colleges, the distance education courses are then subject to review and approval by the Districtwide Curriculum and Instructional Council (CIC), SDCCD Board of Trustees, and State Chancellor’s Office. A list of approved online distance education courses Links to an external site. is updated regularly and posted to the Instructional Services website.

Instructors are assigned by their college departments to teach distance education courses in either a fully online or partially online delivery mode.