The following special topic paper originally appeared in the publication Pursuing Regulatory Compliance for Digital Instruction in Response to Covid-19: Policy Playbook, which was published by the Every Learner Everywhere Network and develop and edited by WCET. The Playbook gives background on several regulations, resources to understand them, and recommendations on how to comply. Today, […]
The spring 2020 term saw an unprecedented response to an unprecedented challenge as virtually every U.S. higher education institution offering face-to-face instruction rapidly switched to remote instruction, many in as little as one to two weeks and some in a few days. Institutions struggled to resolve challenges ranging from the technological to the pedagogical to […]
July 1 is that magical day when Federal Regulations affecting institutions that participate in Title IV federal financial aid programs become effective for regulations that were released by the U.S. Department of Education by November 1 of last year. The purpose of this timing is for financial aid offices at institutions to have time to […]
Winning Isn’t Everything, but Wanting to Win is! – Vince Lombardi Excitement is in the air! There’s two minutes left in the game! You have the ball with no time outs left! What are you going to do? It is up to you! We just heard the horn for the two-minute (well…one-month) warning for the […]
In Harold Ramis’ 1993 classic, Groundhog Day, Bill Murray portrays a television weatherman sent to cover Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day who ends up repeating the day over and over again. At first, Murray’s character, Phil Connors, uses the time loop to his advantage—binge eating, having one night stands, committing robbery, and manipulating local residents […]
On April 1st, the Department of Education finally released the last set of regulations from its epic 2019 negotiated rulemaking process. On April 3rd WCET posted an analysis of proposed changes to the definition of distance education including (finally) a proposed definition of regular and substantive interaction. Today we are examining several other aspects of […]
On March 5, 2020, the Department of Education issued guidance to institutions facing possible interruptions of study because of COVID-19. WCET’s Cheryl Dowd, Director of the WCET State Authorization Network, provided an overview of the guidance for WCET Frontiers. As of the morning of March 12th, a growing number of institutions, especially those on the […]
***Update: On March 20, 2020, the U.S. Department of Education provided updated guidance by adding an FAQ attachment to the March 5, 2020 guidance previously released. Note that this update extends the term of flexibility from being based on students who were already enrolled in a term when the COVID-19 related interruptions occurred to students […]
Two previous WCET Frontiers posts (post 1, post 2) addressed the issue of housing allowances for students who are Veterans and taking online courses. Today and appropriately during Veteran’s Day week, we’re happy to welcome Mark Haskins of Pierce College to provide an exciting update on this issue. As he says, cheers to the VA […]
We’ve written several posts on the negotiated rulemaking process and updates to state authorization and accreditation regulations. Today we hear from another participant in the innovation negotiated rulemaking process on that experience and her institution’s take on new models of learning. We’re excited to welcome Jillian Klein from Strategic Education, Inc. to discuss Capella University’s […]