Digital Learning is dedicated to offering a range of resources and tools specifically designed to enhance the quality of online teaching and course design. This commitment helps ensure that online courses are engaging and inclusive, giving students every opportunity to succeed.
Engaged Online Course Rubric
A cohort of instructional faculty and staff across the university collaborated to create the Engaged Online Course Rubric (EOCR). The group evaluated industry-standard course design rubrics, including Quality Matters and the SUNY Online Course Quality Rubric (OSQCR), and identified components appropriate for a custom UT rubric.
The EOCR contains a set of guidelines that represent research-based best practices in online education. The rubric focuses primarily on course design and helps ensure a course is structured to achieve the stated learning objectives while removing barriers to quality and obstacles to student success.
The EOCR contains seven general standards that cover essential aspects of a quality online course:
In the annotated version, the general standards are expanded to include examples and descriptions that help determine if the standard has been met. The rubric consists of a scoring system that can assess the level at which a course meets the quality standards and highlights improvement areas.
Regular and Substantive Interaction
Research indicates that quality student/instructor interactions and instructor presence are key online course elements that foster student motivation and success (Baker, 2010; Cole et al., 2017). In line with these findings, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) requires that regular and substantive interaction (RSI) between students and instructors occurs in online courses for which students use Title IV funds (NC-SARA, 2021). Courses not meeting this requirement are considered “correspondence courses” and are not eligible for federal Title IV financial aid.
How can an instructor enable BOTH regular and substantive interaction in an online course so that it complies with federal regulations?
The information on this page provides guidance and examples for meeting RSI requirements.
Regular Interaction:
According to the DOE, to qualify as “regular,” instructor/student interactions should be:
Substantive Interaction:
The DOE defines substantive interaction as “engaging students in teaching, learning, and assessment, consistent with the content under discussion, and includes at least two of the following, although best practices in course design support using more than just two.
Engaged Online Course Review
As UT expands student access through online education, online courses and programs must be well-designed, uphold academic standards, and facilitate the cornerstone of quality in an online educational experience: learner engagement.
The Engaged Online Course (EOC) review is designed to recognize and promote quality in online courses. It enables instructors to receive constructive feedback from their peers while acquiring the support needed to improve online course design.
The EOC Review Process
The process is voluntary, instructor-initiated, and internal to UT. During an EOC review, a 3-person team made up of two peer reviewers and an instructional designer (acting as Team Chair) independently review an online course using the Engaged Online Course Rubric (EOCR) and scoring system to determine the extent to which a course meets the quality standards.
The EOC Review takes approximately six to eight weeks from when a course submission is accepted to the final meeting between the instructor and the EOC review team. During the last meeting, the instructor receives detailed feedback from the team. For any standards not met during the review, instructors work with their Team Chair/instructional designer to make revisions and updates. When 85% of the EOC rubric standards are completed, the course earns an Engaged Online Course (EOC) Certification.
Getting Involved
There are multiple ways to support the growth of high-quality courses and programs at UT. Learn more about having a class reviewed or serving as an EOC peer reviewer.
Instructors interested in submitting an online course for review can enroll in the Canvas site, UT’s Engaged Online Course Review. The site contains a link to the EOC review application and other important materials.
Enroll in the UT’s Engaged Online Course Review course (https://ut.pdx.catalog.canvaslms.com/browse/olap/courses/ut-engaged-online-course-review). Select “Enroll Now” and log in with your UTK NetID and password. Do not create a guest account.
Enrolled participants can access the site via the Canvas Catalog beginning on October 26, 2023: https://oithost.utk.edu/canvas-catalog/html/
Provide valuable feedback to your colleagues by serving as an Engaged Online Course (EOC) peer reviewer. Reviewers promote and enhance campus wide standards that address quality online course design and development. UT Faculty and staff interested in registering as an EOC Peer Reviewer can enroll in the Canvas site, UT’s Engaged Online Course Review. The site contains a link to the registration form and details about what peer reviewers can expect when serving on an EOC review team.
Enroll in the UT’s Engaged Online Course Review course (https://ut.pdx.catalog.canvaslms.com/browse/olap/courses/ut-engaged-online-course-review). Select “Enroll Now” and log in with your UTK NetID and password. Do not create a guest account.
Enrolled participants can access the site via the Canvas Catalog beginning on October 26, 2023: https://oithost.utk.edu/canvas-catalog/html/
Instructors are encouraged to download and review the EOC checklist in order to become familiar with the rubric’s guidelines and seven general standards. In the annotated rubric each of the general standards is expanded to include a full annotation with examples. These details can help determine whether a particular standard has been met, has not been met or is not applicable, due to the course content, curriculum, or discipline.
Faculty can benefit from conducting small-scale reviews of their online courses, selecting specific course components to evaluate, or focusing on one or two standards and the accompanying criteria. For example, Standard 4 – Learner Engagement, addresses specific communication and engagement practices that, when implemented in the design and delivery of an online course, support Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI). Instructors may choose to conduct an RSI audit of their online courses using the Standard 4 criteria and guidelines.
Departments are free to adopt and modify any portion of the EOC rubric checklist in support of quality online teaching and course development.
Instructors can use the EOCR checklist or the fully Annotated EOC Rubric to self-assess the quality of an online course. For a chance to experience with the Quality Matters Review tool, instructors can conduct a more formal self-assessment using the Self-Review Tool in Quality Matters (QM). The UTK Engaged Online Course Rubric has been pre-loaded into the QM self-review tool, where instructors can access the full annotations and examples for each of the general standards.
To access the Self-Review tool in QM, log into MyQM (Quality Matters website): https://www.qmprogram.org/myqm/ If you have previously created an account in Quality Matters, log in with your email address. To create an account for the first time, select “No, I am new here” at the sign in page. Since UT is a member of QM, UT employees are eligible to create an account. Once you are logged into QM, select MyCR, and then “Start a Self Review.”
For questions about getting involved with the EOC, please contact:
Ann Ely, EOC Coordinator
aely1@utk.edu
