Online instructors are required to maintain regular and substantive interaction with their students. Guidelines from the Department of Education have been updated to be more descriptive and clearer in their expectations, specifically to differentiate between correspondence courses versus distance courses. Most of the courses offered online by Behrend and through World Campus are distance courses. For these distance courses (or online/web courses as we sometimes refer to them), it is important to understand the terms regular and substantive in order to best serve students and remain in compliance with regulations. In this article, we discuss both regular and substantive interaction with examples. We offer a sample communication plan to guide your daily interactions within the online course. Finally, we share sample syllabus and course language that you can use to explain your expectations around communication. These statements also ensure that the course meets several Quality Matters standards related to communication.

Regular Interaction

The guidelines around regular interaction are described in two parts:

“(i) Providing the opportunity for substantive interactions with the student on a predictable and scheduled basis commensurate with the length of time and the amount of content in the course or competency; and 

(ii) Monitoring the student’s academic engagement and success and ensuring that an instructor is responsible for promptly and proactively engaging in substantive interaction with the student when needed on the basis of such monitoring, or upon request by the student.” 

(Distance Education and Innovation, 2020, pg. 54809)

Under this guidance, there are many items that most online instructors already do to maintain regular interaction with students in their online courses. These items include providing a syllabus, course outline, and course schedule, as well as making announcements and holding office hours. The amount of interaction is expected to be in alignment with the length of the course. The suggested communication plan that we outline below provides opportunity for some level of interaction on a near daily basis but does not require the instructor to use each type every day, which can be overwhelming for both the instructor and students. 

One important consideration and point of distinction is that for course interactions, the interaction cannot always be student initiated. So while it is important to respond to student inquiries, this cannot be relied upon as the sole planned interaction with students in the course. The interactions must also be instructor initiated, which include things like announcements. In most cases, office hours count as another type of regular interaction because they provide the opportunity for interaction (even if not every student in the course utilizes the office hours).

The final criteria for defining regular interaction is the monitoring of the student’s academic engagement and success. This includes the evaluation of student performance on assignments. It also may include checking a student’s level of activity in Canvas or evaluating their level of participation. These are all examples of strategies many online faculty already use.

Substantive Interaction

The guidelines for substantive interaction are a little more complex.

“…substantive interaction is engaging students in teaching, learning, and assessment, consistent with the content under discussion, and also includes at least two of the following—

(i) Providing direct instruction; 

(ii) Assessing or providing feedback on a student’s coursework; 

(iii) Providing information or responding to questions about the content of a course or competency; 

(iv) Facilitating a group discussion regarding the content of a course or competency; or 

(v) Other instructional activities approved by the institution’s or program’s accrediting agency.” 

(Distance Education and Innovation, 2020, pg. 54809)

At the moment, pre-recorded lecture videos are not considered providing direct instruction. However, it is being interpreted that as long as two other types of substantive interaction are included in each learning unit (most often considered a module or lesson), then the standards are being met. Many modules include a discussion and feedback on a submitted assignment. Having these types of interactions as well as including the others listed above throughout the course ensure that the course is meeting the guidelines.

Weekly Communication Plan for Teaching Online

 Some instructors get overwhelmed with their communication in an online course because they feel that they must do all types of communication (send an announcement, reply to discussion posts, grade assignments) every day of the course. However, with some strategic thinking, you can provide a positive experience for students while still maintaining a manageable workload as the instructor. It is equally as important to the student experience to not overwhelm them with too much communication. Communications with students should be simple and clear (Mitchell-Holder, 2016). In the table below, we have created a sample weekly communication plan for teaching online that you can follow.

Type	Mon	Tues	Weds	Thurs	Fri	Sat	Sun
Announcement	X
Office Hours		X	X		X
Interacting on Discussion Posts				Reply to ⅓*
Feedback on assignments due from previous week		Grade 1/2	Grade 1/2
Responding to student email and Canvas inbox questions	X	X	X	X	X	X**

*Use your roster to ensure you are responding to students equitably across the semester. Each week, you could reply to ⅓ of the student roster. Rotate the ⅓ you respond to each week to ensure each student gets 1 response from you in a three week period (if you have weekly discussion boards in your course). If you have fewer discussion boards throughout the course, you may want to respond to half of the roster each time.

**The replies to student emails over the weekend can be considered optional for you but should be clear in your syllabus if you do not intend to be as responsive during the weekends. Please see some sample syllabus language below. An additional note we will make is that many online students will be working on the weekends, particularly if you follow the Monday to Sunday schedule format and have most of your due dates set to Sunday at 11:59 pm. For this reason, you may want to include at least one weekend day that you respond to student emails.

Items to Have in Your Syllabus and Course related to Communication

The following items help to share your plan and expectations with students pertaining to communication in the online classroom. These are required for courses seeking to meet Quality Matters standards. We have provided suggested wording for some of these items that can be included in your syllabus or course orientation module on relevant pages.

QM Standard 1.3: Communication expectations for online discussions, email, and other forms of interaction are clearly stated.

You can use the following language in your syllabus or on another page in your orientation module.

Online Discussion Netiquette
Distance conveys a degree of anonymity, and as a result, many people feel less inhibited in online situations than in their everyday lives. This lessening of inhibitions sometimes leads people to drop their normal standards of decorum when communicating online. Become familiar with the following guidelines regarding both online discussions and email messages.

• Stay on topic. When in a discussion forum, stay on topic. Start a new discussion when appropriate.
• Proofread.  Email and discussion posts are written communication (not spoken) and should contain correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling. 
• Use appropriate language. Excessive use of “chat” or “instant messaging” jargon is not acceptable for online discussions.
• Read existing follow-up postings and don’t repeat what has already been said.
• Inappropriate and/or offensive language, especially comments that might be construed as racist or sexist, are not appropriate and will be dealt with on an individual basis.
• Consider your tone. Be careful with humor and sarcasm. One person’s humorous comment can be another person’s boorish or degrading remark.
• Do not use all caps in an online environment. Using all caps is considered SHOUTING.
• Use proper spelling, capitalization, grammar, usage, and punctuation. Utilize the Spell Check feature.
• Basic Courtesy. Remember that there are other human beings reading your postings, so treat everyone with respect. Don’t post anything you wouldn’t be willing to communicate face to face.

QM Standard 1.8: The self introduction by the instructor is professional and available online.

We suggest including a page in the orientation module that has either a brief written biography or a video about you. While indirectly related to the regular and substantive interaction that we have discussed above, this is one way to communicate with students about who you are and will help students to feel connected to you as their instructor. If students have an idea of who you are, then they will be more willing to engage with you and the course.

QM Standard 3.5: The course provides learners with multiple opportunities to track their learning progress with timely feedback.

Keeping up with grading in an online course can be challenging, but it is an important method of providing regular and substantive interaction. There should be staggered due dates for assignments as well as feedback provided to students in a timely manner. Timely can be subjective; however, we suggest that timely means providing feedback on assignments that may lead students to change their actions for improving on future assignments. For example, students should receive quiz grades before exams that occur later in the course For another example, students should receive feedback on a draft of a paper prior to the final version being submitted by the students. Feedback is expected to be personalized in some way in order to fully meet regulations.

QM Standard 5.3 The instructor’s plan for interacting with learners during the course is clearly stated.

The following is language that can be used in your syllabus to help share your plan for these two types of interaction. Instructors often include these statements in the about the instructor section of their syllabus.

Office Hours:  Mondays 10:30 am – 11:30 am, Wednesdays 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm, and Thursdays noon to 1:00 pm or make an appointment to meet via phone or Zoom
Communication Method: I prefer to communicate via email and will respond within 24-48 business hours. I often do not check email in the evening and on the weekends.

Conclusion 

While the guidelines around regular and substantive interaction may be more detailed than before, many instructors are meeting the requirements already and do not need to make substantial changes to their online teaching practices. There are many ways to successfully communicate with students in an online course. We have outlined some examples for regular and substantive interaction. We have also provided a mock communication plan to help ensure you are active in the course and provide students with the guidance they need. 

 

References

Distance Education and Innovation, 85 Fed. Reg. 54742 (September 2, 2020) (to be codified at 34 C.F.R. pts. 600, 602, & 668).

Mitchell-Holder, S. (2016). Let’s talk: Effectively communicating in your online courses. In W. Kilgore, Humanizing online teaching and learning (Chapter 3). Whitney Kilgore. https://humanmooc.pressbooks.com/

Strigle, J. (2022). Regular and substantive interaction: An instructional design approach toward compliance [Recorded Webinar and PowerPoint slides]. College of Central Florida. https://dlss.flvc.org/idn-webinars