UW Tacoma Policies and Guidelines

At the University of Washington Tacoma, obtaining Distance Learning (DL) Designation for your courses requires that all faculty who wish to teach an online or course complete iTech Fellows. We are in a unique situation with COVID 19. We have all had to move our face-to-face courses online very quickly. As I write this to you today, we have not received a final decision on what fall quarter will look like for UW Tacoma. 

We anticipate, based on the preparation exercises that the departments have been asked to do, that we will have a mixture of hybrid and fully online course offerings. iTech Fellows certification will NOT be required in these circumstances. We do however hope that you will become familiar with the best practices outlined in this training and by completing the exercises, have a course that incorporates many of the  QM course components in your course. 

However, the expectations for both the quality and effectiveness of our online and hybrid courses will be higher in the fall because we have time to plan. We have created this course to help faculty critically think about course objectives, assessments, course design, and integrate nationally recognized Quality Matters standards into their courses. 

Definitions

Campus Course 

Courses where up to  39% of scheduled in-person class time may be replaced with online learning tools and content.  (Synchronous online content counts as campus time.)

Hybrid Course 

Courses where between 40-99% of scheduled in-person class time is replaced with asynchronous online learning tools. Also, there must be at least one in-person class meeting.  In other words, synchronous online time cannot entirely substitute for in-person class time.

Distance Learning (Online) Course

Courses where in-person interaction between students and professors is entirely replaced with online learning tools and content, that do not require the synchronous online presence of all students.

 As explained in the Distance Learning Policy adopted by our faculty, Quality Matters review is now focused on the instructor and not the course.