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state exchange
Florida
College and University Policies
Governing Scheduling and Registration Of On-Line Courses
Tue, 25 Sep 2001
Terry Dugas terry@CROSSCUT.NET
(Reply-To: DEOS-L - The Distance Education Online Symposium From: Linda Chojnicki lchojnic@wnec.edu.)
My thanks to Al, Dennis and Maggie for their comments/suggestions to my questions re: policies.
Florida Gulf Cost University (part of the State University system of Florida) has a very simple Distance Learning policy.
There isn't one.
FGCU determined there should be no difference between a course taught at a distance and one taught in the classroom. The outcomes are expected to be the same. Faculty course load is treated the same. Faculty and student evaluations are the same (although a few delivery specific questions are added to the student evaluations). Tuition is the same. There is no indication on a transcript whether a course was taught face-to-face or at a distance. So there is no DL policy. Policy is policy, regardless of how the instruction is delivered.
This transparency between DL and F2F classes especially impressed the SACS accreditation team and, I believe, played an important part of FGCU receiving full SACS accreditation in record time.
Initially, my DL class was a little harder than my F2F equivalent, because of the amount of writing my DL students had to do through asynchronous discussion (WebBoard). But I was so pleased with the quality of the DL discussion, I moved my F2F discussion to WebBoard as well.
Terry Dugas
Adjunct Professor of Communications
Florida Gulf Cost University