Online courses can be a convenient way for students to complete their coursework amid a busy schedule and other responsibilities, as well as from off-campus locations. While CLAS offers three fully online degree programs (Political Science, Sport and Recreation Management, and Enterprise Leadership), many departments also offer online courses to help meet student need for flexibility.
CLAS has developed guidelines for online courses to help ensure that student needs and the goal of creating a lively on-campus atmosphere are balanced:
- An online course is any course that is asynchronous online, synchronous online, a combination of the latter two, or hybrid.
- In-person programs should offer at least 90 percent of their courses in person.
- Faculty can be assigned one online course per academic year, excluding summer and winter sessions (exceptions can apply for faculty who teach 5 or more courses per academic year or who have an accommodation through FSDS to teach online).
- Faculty who teach in an online program (either for CLAS or another college) can teach more than one online course per academic year.
- Graduate TAs should primarily teach in-person courses and sections; opportunities for teaching online courses should be reserved for more advanced or experienced TAs, and no graduate TA should teach remotely from outside the vicinity of campus.
- Online courses should provide students with a quality learning experience as excellent as that found in campus classrooms, including up-to-date and easily accessible class materials, opportunities for interacting with the instructor and with fellow students, and well-organized course design.
- DEOs and departments are responsible for providing general oversight over the quality of online courses offered by CLAS, including peer observations of online courses if relevant to the instructor’s review process.
University of Iowa Distance and Online Education also has many resources for designing and improving online courses at their web site: https://distance.uiowa.edu/teaching-online.
As a reminder, the CLAS Course Modality Policy provides additional guidance about online teaching while offering an in-person course.
- Courses should be taught only in the modality that is published in MyUI/MAUI (i.e., in person, synchronous online, asynchronous online, or hybrid).
- Instructors are not permitted to offer overall changes in course modality due to student requests (i.e., for flexibility, academic accommodations, or other considerations). In fact, students enrolled in the course depend on it being delivered in the scheduled modality.
- Changes to the modality of a course for more than 1-2 class periods during a semester (due to an emergency or other extenuating circumstance; see Instructor Absences policy above) can be disruptive to the student experience and may impact the student learning outcomes of the course.
Please contact Associate Dean Cornelia Lang with any questions regarding the guidelines for online courses.