It’s that time again – let’s take a look at 2020’s Top 10 Frontiers blog posts based on views by you, our readers!
Thank you for your support of WCET Frontiers through your subscriptions, comments, sharing, and guest authoring! 2020 was a challenge for us all, but we hope our posts provided you with assistance, explanations, and promising practices to help you with getting through each day.
Before We Announce the “Winners…”
Before we get to the Top 10, I’d like to feature some posts that didn’t quite make the “most read” list, but were nonetheless important topics discussed by our guest authors and staff.
This year we faced huge changes to our way of life, both professionally and personally. Many of our blog posts focused on these changes, starting with our “What’s Next” series, which looked at practical tips for surviving the shift to remote learning, the use of open educational resources (OER) and the role of open education during the pandemic, and innovative ways our member institutions responded and communicated with their campus community members (we’re looking at you Cowboy Joe). The “Fall and Beyond” series took the next step, and we considered the future of higher education in an age of COVID-19 and other disasters. We highlighted work from the Every Learner Everywhere Network on national surveys about the reactions and resilience of students and faculty in the wake of the pandemic and their outstanding initiative, The Equity Equation. In October we featured a three-post series on Academic Integrity, focused on threats to academic integrity, contract cheating, and cheating syndicates. We had so many amazing posts this year that we hope helped you with practical advice and considerations (I really wanted to include all of them in this list!).
Our most read post from 2020 was actually posted in 2019! Cheryl Dowd and Dan Silverman from the WCET State Authorization Network (SAN) reviewed the release of the “long awaited” 2019 Final Federal Regulations “Student Assistance General Provisions, The Secretary’s Recognition of Accrediting Agencies, The Secretary’s Recognition Procedures for State Agencies.” Based on the proposed regulations released in June 2019, these rules were a result of consensus through the 2019 Negotiated Rulemaking process. This post, the first of two, reviewed state authorization related regulations, the guidance WCET and SAN asked of the Department of Education during the public comment period, any responses received to our public comment, and implications for institutions upon implementation.
Cheryl authored the number two post on our list as well when she wrote about the guidance from the Department of Education to address compliance with Title IV of the Higher Education Act for institutions whose activities were impacted by COVID-19. The article reviewed compliance flexibilities put in place to accommodate students so they could continue with their education as much as was possible. Cheryl also included information on the resources WCET curated regarding COVID-19.
Well, Cheryl was apparently quite the prolific author this year for Frontiers!
In her sports themed post on professional licensure disclosures, Cheryl provided the one-month warning for the implementation of state authorization and processional licensure disclosure regulations. The new regulations were effective July 1, 2020, and this post plus the new handbook from SAN and author Shari Miller were great playbooks and diagrams to help institutions ensure compliance.
To be honest, I would have been surprised if this post had not been on this list. A frequent flyer on our top read posts, this article from 2016 was written by Russ Poulin and Van Davis. The piece is a primer on interpreting the rules which require courses to include “regular and substantive interaction” between instructors and students. The article contains resources, the origin story for the phrase “regular and substantive interaction,” the main players interested in this topic, and the elements that add-up to regular and substantive interaction. Russ and Van also reviewed the impact of these rules on financial aid and laid out our further work in this area.
At first, we thought this might be an April Fool’s Day joke, but it really wasn’t! This post from Van Davis reviewed the last set of regulations from the 2019 Negotiated Rulemaking process, which were released for public comment on April 1st. This first post reviewed regular and substantive interaction and the second post (number 7 in this list) focused on changes to the definition of credit hour, changes in the calculation of correspondence education eligibility for Title IV financial aid programs, and proposed changes to defining a week of instruction for calculating an academic year.
The new regulations, mentioned above and below, were released in April for public comment and the final versions were released in late August 2020. This post from Van Davis reviewed re-definitions of distance education, regular and substantive interaction, clock and credit hours, academic year and week of instructional time, and direct assessment/CBE type programs.
See number five above… This post focused on the regulations from the 2019 Negotiated Rulemaking process, which were released for public comment on April 1, 2020. In this second post, Van Davis reviewed changes to the definition of credit hour, changes in the calculation of correspondence education eligibility for Title IV financial aid programs, and proposed changes to defining a week of instruction for calculating an academic year.
Based on work completed by several WCET SAN workgroups on designated topic areas, this post provided ideas for communicating with stakeholders about such research and disclosures. The post also reviewed the importance of the topic and how to work within your institutional culture to showcase that importance. Finally, the article advised on getting your “foot in the door” to have a meeting, and how to prepare for stakeholder meetings.
Cyndi Rowland, Executive Director of WebAIM, reminded us of the importance of keeping accessibility in mind even when courses are delivered using different modalities, as they were due to the pandemic. Learning materials were often inaccessible, applications selected to help facilitate learning were not usable by all, and materials caused issues as well (many were scanned or made without accessibility principles in mind). Cyndi provided great starting points for faculty and staff on how to make sure learning content was usable by all learners.
Our final post in the list was the third and final post analyzing the proposed rules based on the 2019 Negotiated Rulemaking Process, which were released April 1, 2020. This post, again from Van Davis, reviewed the proposed changes to direct assessment and competency-based education programs.
Thank you for reviewing our Top 10 blog posts of 2020 with us! Like I said before, we appreciate your support of Frontiers and look forward to sharing more promising practices and information next year!
Institutions often ask, “who is doing good work with state authorization compliance”? The WCET|State Authorization Network (SAN) is pleased to celebrate our sixth year recognizing the outstanding efforts of SAN member institutions and organizations by awarding SANsational Awards.
About the SANsational Awards
These awards are given for the development of high-quality, comprehensive solutions for challenging state authorization issues. Each summer, SAN members may self-nominate their institution or organization to share their practices, processes, or institution policy developed and implemented to manage state authorization compliance.
Nominations are accepted each year in the following three categories:
Licensure Programs: Notifications and disclosures for professional licensure program status in each state.
Location: How do you identify where your students are located while taking online courses, doing internships/practicums etc., and to meet new Federal regulations (34 CFR 600.9(c)(iii) & 34 CFR 668.43(c))? How does your institution report this information?
Compliance Innovations: Institution policy, tools, compliance teams, or other inventive or novel compliance management practices.
Award Process
An Awards Committee reviews the nominations, and the winning submissions are typically recognized at the WCET|SAN Coordinator meeting held each fall at the WCET Annual Meeting. Due to the pandemic, all meetings went virtual with little opportunity for a public celebration of the award winners. However, SAN took to the road to deliver the SANsational Awards to this year‘s award winners at their beautiful campuses. Award winners provided virtual presentations of their work to SAN members. Recordings of these presentations can be found here.
Congratulations to the 2020 SANsational Award Winners!
University of Kentucky
Title – Licensure Disclosure Project
Awarded: Licensure Programs – Notifications and disclosures for professional licensure program status in each state.
Cheryl Dowd meeting with Kentucky award winners
The University of Kentucky is the recipient of two SANsational Awards this year. While this is not the first year that an institution has won two awards, this fete is not typical and points to spectacular work by this institution overall.
The first SANsational Award earned by the University of Kentucky was in the category of Licensure Programs – Notifications and disclosures for professional licensure program status in each state. The University of Kentucky’s Licensure Disclosure Project is of special importance this year due to the July 1, 2020 effective date of new Federal regulations that require professional licensure notifications for all educational programs leading to professional licensure or certifications regardless of modality. Kentucky’s Distance Learning Team recognized the need to ensure that students have access to the most current and accurate information about state educational requirements to obtain a professional license in another state in order to make an informed decision about their education.
The Distance Learning Team worked with key stakeholders including Information Technology Services to develop an interactive database using Tableau. The team is then able to enter updated disclosures to this database which is connected to Tableau via a SQL server. The student is able to easily search by state and program as Tableau converts the information into an ADA accessible dashboard that is embedded on the TLAI Out of State Educational Activities page.
You may wish to note that the development of this project included collaboration with academic programs, University Leadership, UK Legal, Information Technology Services, Admissions, and other campus units to evolve into the streamlined process that is used to meet disclosure requirements. Additionally, key stakeholders at the University of Kentucky maximize distribution of the information though academic programs, advisors, and college liaisons. Ultimately, students are served by this collaborative effort to ensure that prospective and enrolled students have information to make informed decisions about programs leading to professional licensure or certification.
University of Kentucky
Title – Field Placement Coordination
Awarded: Compliance Innovations – Institution policy, tools, compliance teams or other inventive or novel compliance management process.
The second SANsational Award earned by University of Kentucky was in the category of Compliance Innovations – Institution policy, tools, compliance teams or other inventive or novel compliance management process for their Field Placement Coordination Project. Like many institutions, managing and tracking out-of-state field placements varied greatly by department and college. A communication project was created to provide consistent institution-wide process to track students and ensure that all programs conducting out-of-state field placements were compliant with state laws and to assist with SARA reporting. This project, like the Licensure Disclosure Project, shows effective collaboration of key stakeholders at the university.
Development of this project began with collection of information through surveys and evaluation of over 200 University of Kentucky programs’ webpages, promotional materials, and curricula to determine if the programs offered out-of-state activities and then determine applicable. A communication strategy was then necessary to identify and train institution colleagues to be college or program level experts for what University of Kentucky called “state authorization liaisons”. This communication project includes a communication chain between central compliance coordinators and these trained “state authorization liaisons” to divide the work and create buy-in and accountability within these programs to manage compliance requirements. The compliance coordinators, state authorization liaisons, and the programs’ representatives have access to a password protected website to review the details regarding the programmatic out-of-state activities.
Ultimately, this has provided the University of Kentucky with a more streamlined process with centralized compliance to coordinate the programs across a decentralized campus. Students benefit as this communication strategy allows any new regulations or processes to flow more quickly through the liaisons to advise faculty and students regarding out-of-state field placements.
The Ohio State University
Title – State Auth 101 Online Training Module
Awarded: Compliance Innovations – Institution policy, tools, compliance teams or other inventive or novel compliance management process.
The Ohio State University won a 2020 SANsational Award in the Compliance Innovationscategory for its State Auth 101 Online Training Module. Like many organizations, Ohio State requires employees to periodically complete online training modules on topics like data security and Title IX requirements. Ohio State’s state authorization team saw an opportunity to develop a similar training module to share basic state authorization information.
The state authorization team worked with an educational technologist to develop an interactive “State Auth 101” course. The course contains recorded interviews with five university stakeholders to learn how state authorization impacts their units and how each unit implemented processes to comply with the regulations. Video from the interviews was incorporated in the training module to illustrate the impact of state authorization regulations using real examples in an engaging format. The course includes quizzes as well.
The training module allows the team to widely share basic state authorization information with Ohio State faculty and staff. Although there is no substitute for building stakeholder relationships and communicating directly with faculty and staff, the online training module would be a good tool to share basic state authorization information with a large number of stakeholders.
University of Michigan
Title – Online and Hybrid Development Playbook
Awarded: Compliance Innovations – Institution policy, tools, compliance teams or other inventive or novel compliance management process.
The University of Michigan (U-M) won a 2020 SANsational Award in the Compliance Innovationscategory for its Online & Hybrid Program Development Playbook. The Playbook serves as an introductory guide to online and hybrid program development and compliance and as a directory to connect readers with appropriate subject matter experts on campus to engage in deeper discussion. The Playbook exists as a Google Doc maintained by a small team at U-M’s Center for Academic Innovation but reflects a highly collaborative effort with contributions from across U-M (e.g., from academic units, the Office of the General Counsel, the U-M Library, Information and Technology Services, the Registrar’s Office, the Office of Financial Aid, the International Center, and the Office of Research, Ethics, and Compliance). It was designed to identify online education expertise across units, establish a network for administrative problem solving, and establish workflows where gaps existed in the distance education infrastructure at a university that has no central coordinating office for online education.
Cheryl Dowd with the Michigan award winners
The Online and Hybrid Program Compliance section of the Playbook, which accounts for more than half of the total content, is broadly applicable—considering that the featured laws, regulations, and standards of this section are themselves broadly applicable—much of the Playbook can be readily adapted at other institutions. Other sections, including those relating to external approval processes, accreditation, operations, student accounts, and student services, speak more to U-M specific processes, but these sections are helpful in shining a light on how to coordinate administrative functions relating to online and hybrid programs. The Playbook also provides other institutions a method for reviewing their own practices and processes, allowing them to adopt similar resources more germane to their specific needs.
University of Missouri – Kansas City
Title – The State Authorization One Stop Shop
Awarded: Compliance Innovations – Institution policy, tools, compliance teams or other inventive or novel compliance management process.
University of Missouri – Kansas City (UMKC) won a 2020 SANsational Award in the Compliance Innovationscategory for its State Authorization One Stop Shop website. The One Stop Shop features a clickable map where students can select any state to see which distance education programs are available. Each listed program is linked to its designated home page featuring more information. To satisfy NC-SARA requirements, student consumer protection information is included in case a student has a grievance or a complaint.
Cheryl Dowd with UMKC award winners
Each state web page has a list of both face-to-face programs and distance education programs that lead to licensure and certification and which category they fall into: meets educational requirements, does not meet educational requirements, or the institution has not made a determination. This satisfies the Department of Education’s Federal Regulation 34 CFR 668.43 (a)(5)(v). Each program is linked to its designated home page featuring more information on the individual program as well contact information should they have questions. As we discover which programs meet requirements, or if a program no longer meets requirements, this website will be updated accordingly.
Finally, to meet a number of requirements, the contact information for certain licensing entities have been included so a student can request more information if need-be.
UMKC believes that the One Stop Shop for students will allow students and potential students to make an informed decision based on their educational and professional needs.
A Concluding Round of Applause!
Each year, our SAN members continue to amaze us by sharing dynamic new ideas. We are so thrilled to be able to showcase these outstanding projects. You can learn more about these award winning projects on the SANsational Webpage on the SAN website. These ideas are not only strong solutions to meeting compliance requirements, but also share qualities that can be adapted or replicated as models for other institutions.
We are grateful to our 2020 Awards Committee; Sharyl Thompson, Jeannie Yockey-Fine, Cheryl Carroll, and Sarah Cheverton who carefully reviewed and considered each award nomination.
The call for the 2021 self-nominations will be made in Spring 2021. No doubt there will be new and exciting processes and procedures shared by SAN members!
For more information about the activities, events, and resources provided by the WCET|State Authorization Network (SAN), please review the SAN Website or contact Cheryl Dowd or Dan Silverman.
Today, we are featuring the special topic on Accessibility written by Cyndi Rowland, Director, WebAIM, National Center on Disability and Access to Education, Center for Persons with Disabilities at Utah State University. This is the final post in our overview of the Policy Playbook and accompanying special topic papers. We invite you to read the other posts in this series.
Thank you to Cyndi for providing this excellent primer on digital accessibility which suggests a structure for accessibility work, reviews accessibility models, and analyzes recent Office of Civil Rights resolutions.
Van Davis, WCET
Introduction
It is clear that digital accessibility is here to stay. It is the smart and right thing to do. It is also the law. Moreover, it is clear that retrofitting digital materials as an accommodation or engaging in after-the-fact fixes are problematic. This approach leaves the individual with a disability in a position where they must engage in serial complaining to get access. It also leaves the institution vulnerable to legal complaints because the institution has an affirmative obligation to plan in advance.
It is clear that digital accessibility is here to stay.
Most of us are aware that the COVID-19 crisis underscored our digital vulnerability where accessibility was concerned. It increased institutional pressure to provide programs and services that were all, or mostly, online which simultaneously increased the pressure to have those programs and services accessible. Let’s be honest. For many, accessibility was an afterthought which made the necessary post-hoc fixes challenging, or even impossible. In this internet culture of instant access, we can and must do better to provide programs and services that are accessible to all our students, faculy, and staff. This includes those with disabilities. The best way to make sure you are not running behind the beast of inadequate, intractable, or impossible accessibility fixes is to make sure your digital footprint is ready for all. For most, this system change effort involves a multi-year determination to transform the enterprise and make all elements of the institution’s digital architecture inclusive.
Structure Your Accessibility Work
It should not be a surprise as an administrator if you have been asked to oversee, or launch, accessibility at your institution. If you have, you may benefit from structure to support the work. There are several different models of institutional accessibility that are there to help you. I will briefly describe three of them. There is, of course, a fourth way you could organize your work. You could look to fulfil the minimum legal requirements that were outlined by the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) as a consequence of a Resolution Agreement created after a complaint. It is my hope that one of these approaches will resonate with you and provide you the scaffold you need to begin your leadership of the institution’s accessibility journey.
Let us be candid. Institutional resources are limited. Moreover, there are competing priorities for those resources. Yet accessibility timeliness is critical.
It is imperative that an institution identifies common accessibility barriers and removes them in anticipation of student, faculty and staff needs.
Strategic Models to Consider
The good news is that there are several roadmaps available to leadership. In each instance, these models are based on the concept of continuous improvement over several years. While you will need to make some immediate changes to provide access now, it is vital that your work fits into the larger, more long-term process that must be accomplished by the institution. Ultimately, the work will need to be system-wide if accessibility will be achieved. No matter the model that is used, administrators should ensure that they apply an enterprise-wide approach to both attain–and sustain–accessibility across the institution. Failure to realize and address contributions made by the entire system, will doom long term accessibility efforts.
There are three frameworks for institutional accessibility currently being used in the field that are particularly useful for institutions to consider. They are useful because each was created for an educational ecosystem. Each, addresses change at the level of the enterprise, rather than at the level of a website or a unit (e.g., Department or College). Moreover, each considers elements that are beyond mere accessibility such as communication plans or the culture of the institution. These frameworks are: (1) Indicators for Institutional Web Accessibility, (2) Accessible Technology Initiative, and (3) The National Center on Accessible Educational Materials.
There are three frameworks for institutional accessibility currently being used in the field that are particularly useful for institutions to consider… These frameworks are: (1) Indicators for Institutional Web Accessibility, (2) Accessible Technology Initiative, and (3) The National Center on Accessible Educational Materials.
The Indicators for Institutional Web Accessibility (NCDAE)
First is a framework called Indicators for Institutional Web Accessibility, (NCDAE 2016), developed by the National Center on Disability and Access to Education (NCDAE) under U.S. Department of Education funding. The NCDAE gathered best practices in web accessibility system reform in higher education then put them into a helpful structure. The document is organized around 4 indicators of recommended practice to achieve system wide web accessibility. They are: (1) Institutional vision and leadership commitment, (2) Planning and implementation, (3) Resources and support, and (4) Assessment. Each indicator contains benchmarks for the specific indicator, and each benchmark contains statements of evidence that can be considered. This provides users with a very basic roadmap they can use or adapt as they work toward institutional web accessibility. This document, along with a Blueprint for Institutions and an online benchmarking and planning tool, have been used by over 200 institutions (see resource section below for this blueprint).
The Accessible Technology Initiative (ATI)
Second, the Accessible Technology Initiative (ATI) from the California State University (CSU) system took the NCDAE Indicators framework and built on it (Pruitt, C. personal communication 2010). They did so to make some elements of the NCDAE framework more explicit. The result was an accessibility maturity model they use across all 23 campuses of the CSU system. The benefit of a maturity model is that it requires that you achieve foundational work before you are faced with more sophisticated work. For example, you may attack campus wide procurement across 5 different levels, only attempting the next level as the previous level is achieved. The benefit here may be the ability of a campus to focus effort at a detailed level. The ATI framework contains 25 goals and 150+ success indicators with levels that help each campus identify where they need to put effort. Accessing the full model can be done by contacting ati.calstate.edu (“Accessible technology initiative”, n.d.).
National Center on Accessible Educational Materials (NCAEM)
The National Center on Accessible Educational Materials (NCAEM) has worked predominantly in the K-12 space. However, it recently broadened their K-12 quality indicators to work in a higher education context. NCAEM published a resource for higher education that focuses on 7 quality indicators, along with critical components for each indicator (“Higher education critical components” n.d.). Those indicators are:
a coordinated system for the provision of appropriate high-quality materials and technologies,
acquisition and provision of appropriate accessible materials and technologies in a timely manner,
written guidelines related to effective and efficient acquisition, provision, and use of accessible materials and technologies,
comprehensive learning opportunities and technical assistance that address all aspects of the need, selection, acquisition, and use of accessible materials and technologies,
systematic data collection process to monitor and evaluate,
use of the data collected to guide changes that support continuous improvement, and
allocation of resources sufficient to ensure the delivery and sustainability of quality services.
The intent is that, by following these indicators, an institution’s efforts would result in accessible educational materials and technologies. This approach is much less granular than the ATI or NCDAE, yet may be viewed as putting more focus on delivering accessible instructional materials to students with disabilities.
Because system change is highly individualized work for any institution, it is best to review each framework to see which may be the best match for institutional culture, and working style. The frameworks have been used by both large and small institutions. They have also been used by institutions new, and not-so-new to web accessibility. No matter the framework used, the work is most effective with someone shepherding the institution through their journey. Try to avoid multiple changes in leadership during this endeavor. Also, realize that you will (or should) have the backing of a strong and influential committee to help frame and execute your work overtime (see the resource section below for the NCDAE Study Team recommendations). Reviewing the gestalt of each framework will be an important task as you make your selection. Moreover, you may find that you want to create a hybrid framework of your own, selecting the best that each has to offer as you see areas that are a match to your own unique ecosystem.
A highly decentralized campus would not do well with suggestions that are highly centralized. An institution who has a majority of technical personnel at their disposal may chose a model that just would not work for an institution where most content is created, and loaded, by faculty and staff.
There is a benefit in selecting a framework into which you can grow over time. As such, there are no right or wrong choices for institutions who are just beginning or have already made some actions in this area. The best selection is one that will work with the particulars of your institution.
Selecting OCR as Your Framework
As was mentioned before, another way to consider a structure for your work is to look at the components that have been requested of institutions by the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) during resolutions of accessibility disputes. It may be helpful for you to understand the context of an OCR complaint, and the resulting components found in many Resolution Letters. I discuss these in greater detail below.
OCR Resolution Letters
When a complaint is elevated to the level of the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), they investigate. Then they offer a resolution for the complaint. This has happened both after a determination of noncompliance is made as well as prior to the conclusion of the investigation; settlement discussions often result in a facilitated resolution between the parties. When the Department of Education resolves the issue (with or without a finding of legal noncompliance) they will often do so through letters that bind the institution to specific work. The work is outlined in a Resolution Agreement Letter. The actions in the Resolution Agreement are then monitored for compliance. When that happens, much is on the line for an institution. An institutional failure to comply with OCR could place federal funding at risk as well as the ability of students to use federal financial assistance at the institution.
While being under the watchful eye of OCR for a civil rights dispute can be viewed as a PR nightmare, advocacy groups also watch closely. Litigation could come to those who do not perform their obligation under the law when called on the carpet to do so. Also, once an institution has been made aware of how inaccessibility issues create civil rights issues, a future litigant could ask for material damages. This is because the institution had knowledge of their illegal action and chose to not perform.
With all of that said, there may be utility in looking at the common components that have been requested by the Department of Education during the OCR dispute process. Certainly there is no harm in structuring your work around what it is that they ask of others. Of course, if you are not under a resolution agreement, you are not going to be monitored by OCR.
At the end of 2017, I wrote a blog on those components that were common in most digital accessibility OCR resolution letters for WCET Frontiers (Rowland, 2017). In it I shared a content analysis on OCR resolution letters addressing web accessibility. The actions that each institution needed to perform were the result of complaints made primarily because students did not have equivalent access to their instructional materials (e.g., curriculum, labs, texts, library holdings, assessments) and institutional processes (e.g., registration, housing, financial aid, employment). There is a decided focus on making the entire system accessible, and not merely the few pages where a complaint had been lodged.
Content Analysis Results
Based on the content analysis of 2017 institutions were required to:
Designate a person to coordinate IT accessibility,
Define a policy specific to IT accessibility,
Provide a public link to an accessibility page and describe the process for submitting complaints and feedback,
Develop a plan for new content (i.e., what will you do differently to make sure inaccessibility does not result in the future),
Develop a corrective action plan (i.e., what will you do with your current inaccessible digital footprint),
Define a process for evaluating accessibility as part of procurement,
Perform a technology audit on accessibility,
Specifically seek out feedback from those with disabilities,
Provide training to individuals consistent with their role as they create digital materials or web pages.
New Case Processing Manual from OCR
In Spring of 2018, OCR unveiled their new Case Processing Manual which changed several complaint mechanisms, likely resulting in fewer overall complaints. OCR also dismissed other complaints that were in the pipeline consistent with their new process manual. Constituents in the advocacy community took the DeVos Education Administration to court, and in November of 2018 the Department of Education amended the Case Processing Manual (U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2018) to eliminate the offending provision. They then reopened all complaints that had previously been closed, as directed investigations.
The new manual resulted in changes to many resolution letters. These letters are public and can be accessed in an Ed.gov portal (Office for Civil Rights, n.d.) Just as there had been a consistency in the previous resolution letters, there are now fairly predictable components across new letters in which institutions are asked to comply.
Below are descriptions of the five elements that comprise most higher education resolution agreements with OCR. A careful reader will probably note that they ask for nearly the same components as before, but they have grouped them differently, which provides a different structure:
Online content and functionality. Institutions are asked to develop and take substantial steps to implement a strategy to enact an accessible web (content and functionality). Of course, the language is much more nuanced. It stresses that the institution should ensure equal opportunity for those with disabilities to participate in “programs and services” that are online. They mention that both existing and new content need to be addressed. While they do not require a coordinator be appointed as they had in the past, any system wide effort would certainly want to do this. They do mention that a standard needs to be identified during this step (e.g., the Web Content Accessibility Standard 2.1 AA from the Worldwide Web Consortium) that fleshes out that all material that is published, developed, procured, or used should meet the identified standards. They also mention here a provision that allows an institution to provide equally effective alternate access (EEAA) if direct access is not possible (which is quite rare). When EEAA is used, that means that the institution knows that they have a technology that is not accessible. During the brief period where they seek a solution, the EEAA allows them to use their plan for a modification or accommodation such that if a student with a disability needed to use that specific technology, the student would receive the educational benefits in an “equally effective” manner. Failing to have an EEAA plan at the ready could contribute to a discrimination complaint since it is the affirmative obligation of an institution to plan in advance of the needs of students with disabilities. EEAA is one strategy many institutions are using while they bridge the old inaccessible content to the new accessible content they will soon have. This becomes important especially for large procurements where an institution may be in a contract for another 2 years before they can require accessibility of a platform they currently use (e.g., their LMS, registration, employment, or financial systems). In this section, OCR provides examples of what a strategy might look like. Fundamentally, EEAA is a way to set priorities for the work of the institution. For example, an institution might determine that it should begin with the accessibility of templates or its most frequently used pages. Finally, OCR states that this work shouldn’t take more than 12 months.
Accessible alert process. Within a month, an institution should create an accessible way for users to notify the institution that they are having problems with the accessibility of online content. Of course, an institution should remember that they should not wait to make content accessible. A notification provides ongoing feedback.
Undue burden and fundamental alteration. In this provision, institutions are notified that if any of this work fundamentally alters the nature of a program or service, or if it is considered an undue burden, they can contact OCR (in writing) to get a determination establishing if a waiver may be possible for some of the work. In my experience this almost never happens and should not be considered for any but the most extreme circumstances.
Technical assistance. OCR wants each institution to know that to the extent practical, they can provide technical assistance if desired by the institution. They do provide a reminder that the timelines covered under this agreement cannot be altered by the availability of technical assistance.
Reporting Provision. The institution is given a date by which they must submit a report on how they have responded to each of the elements in the agreement. It is typically about a year.
Summary
While inaccessible digital content has been around since the inception of the internet, and programs have been available to help higher education since the mid 90’s, the era of COVID-19 has revealed an even greater vulnerability. With so many online (students, faculties, and staff), it should not surprise us that inaccessible content and technologies would bubble to the top. This phenomenon is discriminatory and it needs to stop. Now it is time for all of higher education to act.
It is important to remember that actions you take to avoid federal nondiscrimination laws will necessarily be the floor of your efforts. Strive to engage in best practice, inclusive practice. Strive to the spirit, not just the letter of the law. Doing so will help all your students achieve their very best. Doing so will help your institutional reputation and student outcomes which we all know are our currency.
Reviewing frameworks will help you structure what will be a multi-year system change effort. This step is important. You will find that those described above are more similar than dissimilar. To select the one that will be best for you will require that you pay careful attention to the ways in which they harmonize with the culture of your institution. Don’t be afraid to create a hybrid approach. Make sure you do not do this alone. While you may be given the leadership for the change initiative, it will be a committee that together will help shape the institution and make lasting change.
It is hoped that by providing several models for system-wide web accessibility, an administrator can locate one that will be a good match for the culture, size, and uniqueness of the institution. In so doing, set forth on a path to transform the digital footprint to one that can be accessed by all.
Suggested Resources and References
California State University Office of the Chancellor (n.d.). Accessible Technology Initiative Web Accessibility Evaluation. (link)
National Center on Accessible Educational Materials (n.d.). Higher Education Critical Components of the Quality Indicators for the Provision of Accessible Educational Materials and Accessible Technologies. (link)
NCDAE (2012). The Institution’s Web Accessibility Study Team. (link)
NCDAE (2013). GOALS Blueprint for Institutional Web Accessibility. (link)
NCDAE (2016). Indicators for Institutional Web Accessibility. (link)
Office for Civil Rights (n.d.). Office for Civil Rights Recent Resolution Search. (link)
Rowland, C. (2017). Steps you can take now to address accessibility at your institution. WCET Frontiers. (link)
U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (2018). Case Processing Manual. (link)
The U.S. Department of Education’s IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) provided guidance on how to report distance education activities during the pandemic. Whether on an emergency basis or planned for the safety of faculty and students, colleges and universities have adopted a variety of academic modality options. The Department’s explanations are welcomed help for institutional personnel trying to report in the correct categories.
Even in good times, some institutions have struggled with how to report on the varying definitions of distance education. Note that “distance education” is used as it is the official term used by federal, accreditation, and many state regulations. Distance education includes online education, plus other modalities such as satellite, phone, and two-way video.
Institutions are held to different definitions by the organizations to which they report:
IPEDS uses a definition in which a course or program needs to be exclusively at a distance with a few exceptions. From the IPEDS glossary:
Distance education course
A course in which the instructional content is delivered exclusively via distance education. Requirements for coming to campus for orientation, testing, or academic support services do not exclude a course from being classified as distance education.
Distance education program
A program for which all the required coursework for program completion is able to be completed via distance education courses.
Accreditation agencies have their own threshold for counting distance courses or programs. Several use a “majority” (more than 50%) of the course. From the Higher Learning Commission glossary:
distance-delivered courses – Courses in which at least 75% of the instruction and interaction occurs via electronic communication, correspondence, or equivalent mechanisms, with the faculty and students physically separated from each other.
distance-delivered programs – Certificate or degree programs in which 50% or more of the required courses may be taken as distanced-delivered courses.
“Distance Education – The formal educational process that occurs when students and instructors are not in the same physical setting for the majority (more than 50 percent) of instruction.” Other entities have their own definitions. Earlier this year, Indiana University updated their report on the various definitions to which they are subject. They list definitions for the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Homeland Security and the following expectations of their state oversight entity:
Indiana Commission Higher Education (ICHE)
Definitions for distance education courses and programs used by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education are under review by the commission at the time of development of this report. Currently, the commission follows the Sloan consortium definitions for distance education courses and programs:
Distance education course = 80% or more of the content in a course is delivered via distance. Distance education program = 80% of requirements to meet degree/credential are offered via distance.
Not that we recommend this, but we have heard of frustrated institutional researchers picking one definition and using it for all reports. IPEDS clearly wants you to follow their instructions when completing their surveys.
The IPEDS Surveys that Collect Distance Education Data
For institutions that offer federal (Title IV) financial aid, completing the IPEDS surveys is a requirement. Distance education activities are reported in the following surveys (survey code, survey name, and a brief explanation of what is collected):
IC: Institutional Characteristics – does institution offer DE courses or programs?
EF: Fall Enrollment – For Fall term, distance education student enrollments, either partially or exclusively at a distance. Includes a geographic breakdown.
E12: 12-month Enrollment – For the full year, distance education student enrollments.
C: Completions – can programs be completed either partially or entirely at a distance?
IPEDS Reporting of Distance Education in the Pandemic
Reporting on distance education activities is more difficult with the pandemic as courses have changed modality or used mixes of modality. IPEDS provides a helpful page of explanations to help decipher the distance education reporting requirements. To learn more about how to report given the effect of the pandemic, be sure to click the link in red under the title and near the top of the page.
After clicking on the link in red, they define “remote instruction” as instruction that would otherwise have been delivered in-person. The following overall advice is provided:
This advice reads: in general, when reporting data on DE courses in IC, E12, and EF, institutions SHOULD include remote learning implemented in response to the Coronavirus Pandemic. When reporting data on DE programs in IC and C, institutions SHOULD NOT include remote learning implemented in response to the Coronavirus Pandemic unless the program anticipates maintaining this modality permanently. Allowing program completion via DE is not the same as having planned full DE programs.
To help, they have a flowchart that answers the following question:
Should I report online learning implemented in response to the Coronavirus Pandemic as DE in IPEDS?
This litmus test is to be applied to each course that you offered. It takes reading the above graphic and the next one a few times to get the meaning. The key words appear to be “entirely” and “normal.”
For courses: IPEDS DOES want you to report a course and its enrollments in the “distance education” category if the entirety of the course was offered online. This is true whether it was offered as a planned distance education course or one that would normally be face-to-face and transitioned online as a remote learning class.
A common example would be a course that would normally would have been offered in a face-to-face format, but was transitioned to remote for the entirety of the Fall term. For that term, IPEDS is declaring it to be an online class for their counting purposes.
That guidance from the Department is understandable, but it will likely create a one-year spike in distance enrollments and courses that will remain an asterisk in data reporting for years to come.
For programs: IPEDS DOES want you to report a program as “distance education” if the program was moved entirely online, but only if this is a PERMANENT move. If the program is planned to return to face-to-face under normal (non-pandemic) circumstances, then it is not counted in the distance education statistics.
For courses: IPEDS DOES NOT want you to report a course and its enrollments in the “distance education” category if the course started in-person and moved to online. That course included some face-to-face instruction, so it does not meet the IPEDS definition of “distance education.”
For “hybrid,” “blended,” or “hyflex” courses, there is no federal definition. All of those options use a mixture of face-to-face and distance/online modalities. Therefore, it does not meet the IPEDS “distance education” definition and those courses would be classified in the same category for IPEDS reporting as a face-to-face course.
For programs: IPEDS DOES NOT want you to report a program as “distance education” if the program was moved entirely online only because of the pandemic. If the program is planned to return to face-to-face under normal (non-pandemic) circumstances, then it is not counted in the distance education statistics.
What Should You Do?
There are some steps that you may wish to take in response:
Review the guidance and understand how it works in your institutional setting.
Work with your institutional research staff to apply the definitions and guidance at your institution. Typically, there may be indicators in your Student Information System that identifies the courses and programs which would normally fit each of the definitions. The institutional research staff may need help in identifying how to classify courses or programs, as some may have moved completely to remote/online learning and others may have used a mixture.
Watch for any additional clarifications from the other oversight entities (i.e., accrediting agencies, states) and gauge what effects that guidance may have on your operations or on reporting for institutional research purposes.
Let us know if you have unusual circumstances that defy classification.
Please remember that our advice is based upon our best reading of the guidance and is not an official interpretation.
Finally, we thank IPEDS staff for providing some language to help institutions comply with reporting in as consistent a way as possible. If everyone reportedly differently, the data would be worthless.
Today, we are featuring the special topic on Financial Aid by Jill Desjean, Policy Analyst, National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA). Thank you to Jill for providing this excellent primer on financial aid audits and reviews, aid for distance education, and key considerations for financial aid in the case of remote and/or distance education.
Next time we will have our final post highlighting the Policy Playbook and is focused on Accessibility.
Enjoy the read,
– Lindsey Downs, WCET
Introduction
Federal Financial Aid programs are intended to assist students with the financial aspects of accomplishing their postsecondary education goals. These aid programs are authorized by Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA), as amended. They include the:
Federal Pell grant program,
Direct Loans, and
campus-based grant and work study programs, among others.
In total, the federal student aid programs provide more than $120 billion in financial assistance for postsecondary education. Institutions of higher education must meet certain eligibility requirements to qualify for participation in the federal student aid programs, including being accredited by a U.S. Department of Education – recognized accrediting agency, being approved by the Department, and being authorized to operate in the state. To maintain continued eligibility, institutions must demonstrate that they are financially responsible, administratively capable, and adhere to a number of consumer disclosure requirements.
Students must also meet certain eligibility requirements to receive federal student aid at a Title IV-eligible institution. These include but are not limited to:
being a U.S. citizen or eligible noncitizen,
making satisfactory academic progress toward a degree or credential,
being registered for Selective Service,
not being in default on a federal student loan, and
having no prior drug offense convictions.
Applying for Financial Aid
Students begin the financial aid process by completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The FAFSA is valid for one academic year and students must submit a new application annually to qualify for financial aid.
Roughly 30% of applications are selected for a process called verification, by which students submit supporting documentation to confirm the information they provided on the FAFSA is correct. Financial aid administrators review and, if necessary, correct and update the FAFSA using the documentation the student provides.
The application and verification process results in the calculation of the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) using a formula developed by Congress. Institutions calculate a student’s estimated costs for a period of enrollment, typically an academic year, called the Cost of Attendance (COA). The COA is comprised of both direct institutional charges like tuition, fees, and on-campus housing and meal plans, as well as indirect education-related expenses such as books and supplies, off-campus housing, food, transportation, childcare, and personal expenses.
The COA represents the total amount of financial aid a student can receive from any source (federal, state, institutional, or private) for that period of enrollment. The COA less the EFC represents the total amount of need-based financial aid (Pell grants, subsidized Direct Loans, some state, institutional, or private scholarships) a student can receive from any source. So, for instance, a student with a COA of $30,000 and an EFC of $5,000 could receive need-based aid of up to $25,000 plus non-need-based aid of up to $5,000.
Compliance
Financial Aid Audits
The U.S. Department of Education is charged with oversight of the federal student aid programs and for ensuring institutional compliance with the HEA to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse. Institutions must demonstrate that they have adequate numbers of trained staff and sufficient resources to capably administer federal student aid programs. Institutions must also prove that they are financially responsible, which includes ensuring that they have appropriately trained staff with proper separation of duties, are current on debt obligations, and are otherwise financially stable. Institutional compliance with the laws and regulations governing the HEA Title IV aid programs is monitored through annual audits and periodic program reviews.
Schools must have financial and compliance audits performed each year by a licensed accountant. This is generally referred to as the “single audit” or the “A-133 audit” after the name of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) document that provides auditors with instructions for how to complete this audit requirement for federal grant recipients. These annual audits, which are submitted to the Education Department upon completion, examine a broad range of institutional practices. Some of these practices may fall outside of the purview of the financial aid office but do have an impact on the institution’s eligibility to participate in federal student financial aid programs.
Examples of institutional responsibilities that A-133 audits examine include:
Compliance with the eligibility rules for each of HEA Title IV aid programs.
Cash management and fund reconciliation practices.
Compliance with institutional, student, and program eligibility requirements.
Verification of certain data elements reported on the FAFSA, such as identity, income and family size.
Compliance with student consumer information requirements (including, but not limited to, financial aid disclosures, campus crime and safety statistics, and athletics participation rates).
Drug-Free Workplace and Civil Rights Compliance.
Typical top audit findings for higher education institutions:
Failure to take corrective action for previous findings.
Miscalculations or missed deadlines for returning Title IV funds when students withdraw.
Inaccurate/untimely reporting of student enrollment status.
Pell Grant overpayment/underpayment.
Improper management of Title IV aid credit balances on student accounts.
Student loan entrance and exit counseling deficiencies.
Verification violations.
Improper certification of Direct Loans.
Program Reviews
Program reviews, unlike audits, are performed by the Education Department. There is no set schedule for when an institution will have a program review, but they must be performed on a periodic basis. The Department is also required to prioritize program reviews for schools with certain risk characteristics, such as high student loan default rate, fluctuations in Pell Grant or Direct Loan volume, high student dropout rates, or issues identified by entities like accreditors, state licensing agencies, or students.
Program reviews can be comprehensive— looking at a schools’ overall compliance with all laws and regulations— or focused on just one or a few select areas of compliance. The most common program review findings are similar to those found in audits, except that program reviews frequently identify noncompliance with crime awareness requirements as well, which carries a penalty of significant fines for violations. Institutional compliance failures in any area, though, can result in liabilities that the school must repay if funds were improperly disbursed, in penalties like fines, or in the limitation, suspension, or even termination of participation in the HEA Title IV aid programs.
Financial Aid for Distance Education
Students can receive federal student aid funds for distance education courses, provided those courses belong to an otherwise Title IV-eligible program, and the school has been determined to have the capability to effectively deliver distance education programs by a Department-recognized accrediting agency with distance education included in its scope.
The Department of Education distinguishes between distance education and correspondence education. The major distinction is with respect to interaction; a correspondence course is one for which the school provides instructional materials and exams for students who do not physically attend classes at the school and who are studying independently. For federal student aid purposes, all correspondence education is distance education, but not all distance education is correspondence education.
There are no special limitations on the amounts or types of Title IV aid students in distance education programs may receive. However, a student enrolled in a correspondence course can only receive Title IV funds if the course is part of a program that leads to an associate’s, bachelor’s, or graduate degree; if the program leads to a certificate, the student is not eligible for aid for that course. There are also restrictions regarding cost of attendance for correspondence courses, generally limiting the COA to only tuition and fees. On the other hand, institutions are prohibited from making a distinction based on the mode of instruction when determining the cost of attendance for a student receiving all or part of their instruction through non-correspondence distance education.
In March, 2020, the Department granted flexibility—which they extended in May—for institutions switching from in-person to distance education due to COVID-19, granting broad approval for institutions to offer distance education for terms that included March 5, 2020 or that began on or between March 5 and December 31, 2020.
Distance education lends itself well to innovative learning models such as self-paced learning. However, financial aid rules were designed for programs that follow traditional calendar systems and can be difficult to apply to more innovative models. For instance, students in subscription-based programs who rely on financial aid are frequently prevented from working at their own pace because their financial aid disbursements do not align with their progression through their studies. The Department recently closed their public comment period on a proposed rule that would make the financial aid process more agile to better accommodate these types of learning models. The HEA is also long overdue for a reauthorization, which provides another opportunity for improvement.
Foreign Schools and Financial Aid for Distance Education
The HEA does not permit foreign Title IV-eligible institutions to offer distance education to U.S. students who receive Title IV funding. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act waives this restriction— retroactive to March 1 and for the duration of a declared emergency— in cases where the government of the nation in which the foreign institution is located declares a national emergency due to COVID-19. This restriction does not apply in cases where the student is a degree-seeking student at a U.S. institution and enrolled in a study abroad program at the foreign institution.
Key Challenges When Pivoting from Face-To-Face Instruction to Remote Instruction
There are several financial aid-related considerations when transitioning from in-person to distance education.
For online program(s) that would enroll students from across the U.S., there are financial aid documentation requirements that must be provided in person or as a notarized copy. Institutions should be sure to update communications to include the notarized copy option for students who are too far away to provide documents in person and information on how students might find a notary. The Department of Education has granted temporary flexibility on the in-person or notary requirements for certain documents due to the difficulty of visiting campus or a notary public during the COVID-19 pandemic.
If the shift to distance learning would take advantage of the flexibility of that modality to offer self-paced or subscription-based learning, or would make changes to the academic calendar, institutions should be sure to work with the financial aid office to discuss any financial aid implications. As noted earlier, the current rules for disbursing federal student aid do not align seamlessly with innovative learning models. The Department of Education has extended some COVID-19 related flexibilities with respect to standard terms through the end of the academic year that includes December 31, 2020, permitting adjacent terms to overlap.
The COA may be different for an online program vs. an in-person program. Be sure your financial aid office is involved in discussions about moving programs online and what costs are associated with those changes so they can develop accurate COAs.
A switch to providing online programs will likely require using electronic means of collecting financial aid documents, much of which contains personally identifiable information (PII). Be sure that whatever method(s) you set up to receive financial aid documentation electronically is compliant with the Department of Education’s cybersecurity requirements.
Be aware that the CARES Act made funds available for students and institutions for expenses related to switching to distance education when that change is made due to COVID-19. Student emergency grants are available for expenses related to the disruption of campus operations due to COVID-19. Note that students who were enrolled in exclusively online programs when the national emergency was declared on March 13 are not eligible to receive these funds. Institutional CARES Act funds are available for institutional costs that arose as a result of significant changes to the delivery of instruction, including interruptions in instruction, due to COVID-19.
The election of Donald Trump in 2016 significantly impacted higher education, perhaps more than any recent election. Citing her belief that “We must expand our thinking about what education actually is, as well as resist the urge to expect all students to follow the same track,” Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has presided over a number of educational changes including:
significant changes to Title IX regulations,
the rollback of gainful employment regulations,
changes to borrower defense regulations that increase the burden of proof for borrowers seeking relief,
changes to accreditation and state authorization regulations,
a new executive order limiting the types of diversity, equity, and inclusion training that can take place at institutions, and
changes to the definition of correspondence education, distance education, and regular and substantive interaction.
So what does higher education have to look forward to under a Joe Biden administration?
The context for higher education reform for 2021-2024
The Biden administration faces a number of significant higher education challenges including the financial impact of the pandemic, racial inequity, college affordability, and the continued need to pass critical higher education legislation such as the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.
Institutions are continuing to feel financial and enrollment pains stemming from the current pandemic. In addition to drops in fall enrollment, as much as 9.4% at community colleges, institutions also face revenue drops from both tuition and, for residential campuses, room and board. Many institutions, in an effort to shore up budgets, have turned to furloughs as well as eliminating low-enrollment academic programs (that would also come with permanent reductions in faculty lines).
It’s no wonder that the financial stability of higher education was downgraded by Moody’s back in March. And it’s doubtful that the worst of the financial challenges are over as many states expect huge budget shortfalls that will impact public higher education institutions. The American Council on Education estimates that at least another $120 billion in federal stimulus funding directly to institutions is needed to shore up higher education budgets during the pandemic. And with over 44 million Americans holding over $1.5 trillion in student loans, it is safe to say that America has a student debt and college affordability crisis. It should come as no surprise that the free college movement has gained such traction in the last several years.
In normal times, the Higher Education Act (HEA), the omnibus higher education bill that covers everything from financial aid to sexual harassment, would be renewed every five years. However, HEA was last reauthorized in 2008, 12 years ago. As a result, much of the response to current higher education challenges has been relegated to regulations passed by the Department of Education. These regulations, though, cannot take the place of HEA reauthorization as the Department is legislatively limited in what and how it can regulate. HEA reauthorization has been the victim of partisan battles for the last several years and, with a divided legislature will likely remain unauthorized for the foreseeable future.
President-elect Biden’s higher education plan
Earlier this year, President-elect Biden released his higher education plan which revolves around three core areas:
Invest in community colleges and training to improve student success and grow a stronger, more prosperous, and more inclusive middle class.
Strengthen college as the reliable pathway to the middle class, not an investment that provides limited returns and leaves graduates with mountains of debt they can’t afford.
Support colleges and universities that play unique and vital roles in their communities, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs).
There are several pieces to the 16 page plan, but the main components include addressing regulations meant to protect students, decreasing student debt, the development of free college for many students, and providing expanded funding to HBCUs and MSIs.
Regulatory actions
There are several potential regulatory actions that Biden has signaled that he supports. The President-elect has signaled that he supports a “quick end” to the Title IX rules recently adopted—rules that many in the Democratic Party and on college campuses believe will have a chilling impact on sexual assault victims. Biden has also vowed to “stop for-profit programs from profiteering off of students” by bringing back Obama era gainful employment and borrower defense regulations and eliminating the 90/10 loophole that allows for-profit institutions an incentive to enroll veterans and active duty service members.
President-elect Biden has proposed a number of measures that would lessen or completely eradicate student debt. Chief among those includes a proposal to cancel $10,000 of student debt for all borrowers as a part of pandemic relief as well as extending debt forgiveness to public education borrowers earning less than $125,000 per year. In addition, the Biden plan proposes to expand the public loan forgiveness program as well as automatically enroll all borrowers in an income-based repayment program that would cap repayments at five percent of discretionary income and automatically eradicate any remaining debt after 20 years of regular payments.
The President-elect has also signaled interest in extending the student loan relief slated to end December 31, 2020, by extending that relief through November 2021. But the student debt plans that have garnered the most discussion are the Biden free college plans where Biden proposes to make two years of public community college free for all students and the remaining two years at a public university free for families earning less than $125,000 per year.
Such a program comes with a potentially high price tag, however, with cost estimates of up to $1.38 trillion over the next decade with states picking up a quarter of the costs. Biden has also proposed an additional $70 billion for aid for students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, effectively making a baccalaureate degree free for many of those students.
Federal funding
The Biden plan’s economic impact is not limited to free college programs, however, as he has also signaled support for doubling Pell Grants as well as significantly increasing federal funding for community colleges and HBCUs and MSIs. In fact, under the Biden higher education plan, community colleges would be one of the biggest winners, perhaps signaling the influence of the soon-to-be First Lady and community college English professor, Dr. Jill Biden. Also standing to gain are HBCUs and MSIs, perhaps signaling the influence of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, a HBCU graduate. Increased federal funding proposed under the Biden plan includes:
$8 billion in grants to community colleges for improvement of their facilities, including technology infrastructure.
$50 billion in workforce training grants with most of that money likely to go to community colleges.
$18 billion in scholarship money for students enrolled at four year MSIs.
$10 billion to create new centers of excellence aimed at improving student. engagement, learning, retention, and success.
$20 billion to improve infrastructure at MSIs.
$20 billion to improve rural broadband coverage that would significantly help rural students and institutions.
$10 billion to improve student enrollment, retention, completion, and employment at MSIs.
$5 billion to improve graduate programs in education, health care, and STEM fields.
$7.5 billion in additional Title III and V support to MSIs.
Conclusion: How realistic are these higher education plans?
Perhaps the billion-dollar question is how realistic are any of the President-elect’s higher education plans. Terry Hartle, Senior Vice President at the American Council on Education, recently suggested, “We’ll be looking at a once-in-a-generation effort to invest in America’s students and workers.” However, such an investment is not likely to come easily. Although it would be possible for President-elect Biden to accomplish some of his goals through executive order, those plans with higher price tags such as doubling the Pell, free college, and increased community college and MSI funding would require Congressional approval. And that approval is unlikely to come from a divided Senate.
There are currently two Senate seats that are undecided in Georgia that are headed to a January run-off. Assuming that the Democrats picked up both of those seats, there would be a 50/50 split that could be broken by the Vice President voting. However, they would not have enough votes to overcome a Republican filibuster, effectively giving the Republican party veto approval over any legislation. The calculus is complicated with a Republican majority or even an evenly split chamber. In either of those cases, Democrats would need to maintain strict party loyalty (a difficult feat) and peel away Republican votes while still facing the threat of Republican filibuster. This environment will make it all but impossible to pass expensive higher education reform such as free college or widespread student debt forgiveness. It even puts into question the ability to see the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.
With a Congressional path towards action highly limited, President-elect Biden will likely be forced to focus on the use of executive actions such as executive orders or Department of Education regulations as the primary mechanisms for change. This reliance executive actions and regulations will severely limit the President-elect’s ability to pass more controversial programs and instead focus on smaller, more bipartisan initiatives such as increasing Pell grants and perhaps targeted student debt alleviation programs such as expanding the current public loan forgiveness program. We can also expect to continue to see a heavy emphasis placed on the regulatory role of the Department of Education around issues such as Title IX sexual harassment regulations, transgender and non-binary student protections, gainful employment regulations, and borrower defense regulations.
Regardless of what the next four years holds, you can rest assured that WCET will be closely following developments in Washington, DC, and blogging about it here at WCET Frontiers.
These unprecedented times raised regulatory compliance challenges that may have surprised some institution personnel. However, some of these regulatory compliance challenges were not actually unprecedented. The COVID-19 pandemic induced institutions to shift from in-person to remote instruction. As a result, institutions closed campuses and served students who were, in some cases, located in a state other than the state where the institution is located. Institution personnel that routinely worked in distance education were not surprised by the idea of state authorization for the out-of-state activities of the institution. However, some faculty and academic administrators new to teaching online were taken aback by the notion of state authorization (meaning compliance with state requirements where their students are located).
This is the third installment of our multi-part series written by WCET and WCET State Authorization Network staff with financial and production support from Every Learner Everywhere regarding the recently published Pursuing Regulatory Compliance for Digital Instruction in Response to COVID-19: Policy Playbook. As we previously shared, this Playbook provides administrators and faculty with a concise and easy to use guide to the most significant regulatory issues impacting digital learning. Each section of the Playbook provides links to regulations and Department of Education guidance where available. Used in conjunction with Delivering High-Quality Instruction Online in Response to COVID-19: Faculty Playbook, instructors and administrators have an overview of the most critical pedagogical and regulatory concerns surrounding online and digital education quality and student success. Today, we review another part of the appendix that dives more deeply into the issue of state authorization.
–Cheryl Dowd, WCET SAN
Fundamentals of State Authorization
States hold the primary role in providing oversight of all educational activities that occur within their state. States authorize the postsecondary institutions that are physically located in the state. Additionally, and surprising to some, is that the states may direct oversight requirements for out-of-state postsecondary institutions that offer activities such as online courses and experiential learning that occur in their state. State authority to provide oversight is rooted in the powers reserved to the states under the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Federal Regulations for state authorization tie the ability to participate in Title IV HEA programs to compliance with states laws in the state where the institution’s students are located. Therefore, it is important for institutions to know where their students are located to determine what, if any, regulatory requirements are necessary for the institution to obtain state institutional approval in the states where the student is located.
State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements – SARA
For an institution to obtain institutional approval in each state where a student is located is a complicated endeavor. States vary as to the extent of the oversight, application process, fees, reporting requirements, and approval renewal process. This wide variation is not only a challenge for institutions, it is viewed as barrier to accessibility to online distance education and consistent consumer protection for students. For these reasons, an effort initiated by The Presidents’ Forum at Excelsior College, brought together state leaders, accrediting agencies, and higher education leaders to develop a plan to develop a uniform set of standards and responsibilities for institutions for oversight of distance education that occurs across state lines. This uniform structure ultimately became the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements (SARA).
Because states are at the center of the oversight of institutions, reciprocity, as an option for state institutional approval for distance education, was presented directly to each state to make its own decision to voluntarily become a member of SARA. States voluntarily began joining SARA in early 2014. By June of 2018, 49 states, District of Columbia, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico had become members of SARA. Many states required state legislative action signed by the state governor in order to join SARA.
The basic principle of SARA is that the state where the institution is located provides oversight for institutions to offer distance education to students located in other states that are also members of SARA. Institutions must seek approval to participate in reciprocity in the state where the institution is located. Upon approval by the home state of the institution, the institution does not need to seek state by state institutional approval for interstate distance education in other SARA member states. California, Guam, and Northern Marianas Islands are not members of SARA, therefore the institutions in California, Guam and Northern Marianas Islands cannot participate in reciprocity through SARA.
Institutions located in a non-SARA member state or territory or an institution that chooses not to participate in SARA, must either be in compliance with legal requirements in the states where the students are located or prevent students from participating in activities in those states. Institutions that participate in SARA must comply with the uniform requirements as imposed by the SARA Manual for their out-of-state activities subject to SARA Policy. These requirements include the terms of the annual renewal application and annual data reporting.
Federal Regulations for State Authorization
The Federal Regulation for state authorization of distance education has had a sorted history and has been subject to political and court battles over the past ten years. The original Federal regulation for state authorization of distance education released in 2010 was ultimately vacated by the Federal courts due to a procedural error. However, this first version is credited with awakening the states and institutions to consider state authorization for activities of the postsecondary institution that occur in a state other than the location of the institution. Ultimately, a Federal regulation for state authorization of distance education, provided by the 2019 Negotiated Rulemaking Committee that came from consensus, released as a final regulation on November 1, 2019, became effective July 1, 2020.
What remained constant throughout the Federal process, and will continue into the future, is that States are at the center of state authorization and are the cornerstone of state oversight of educational activities.
States are at the center of state authorization and are the cornerstone of state oversight of educational activities.
The effective Federal regulation for State Authorization 34 CFR 600.9(c) includes the following key points for which the institutions should review the specific language:
Institutions must either participate in reciprocity or have institutional approval in states where students are located when participating in distance education or correspondence courses.
Institutions must document the state’s approval or reciprocity to share with the Secretary upon request.
Location is determined at time of enrollment and when applicable, upon formal receipt of a change.
Institutions must document the process for determination of location to share with the Secretary upon request.
Bonus Section: New Federal Regulations for Professional Licensure Notifications
The State Authorization appendix did not include professional licensure notifications, but we would be remiss not to include this related issue. In addition to institutional approval for activities that occur in a state other than the home state of the institution, institutions must comply with any required state program approval by the state licensing boards in the states where the activities of a program that lead to professional licensure or certification occur.
Institutions must not only determine any necessary state licensing board approvals, but also must comply with Federal regulations to supply public and direct notifications to prospective and enrolled students whether the curriculum of any program leading to professional licensure or certification meets state educational requirements in states and territories. On July 1, 2020, notification requirements became effective tying compliance with participation in Title IV HEA programs. It is important for the institution to review the language of 34 CFR 668.43 (a)(5)(v) and 34 CFR 668.43(c). We previously shared analysis of the regulations and compliance strategies to supply professional licensure notifications.
The four key elements regarding notifications, for which the institution should carefully review the nuances, include the following:
Notifications are required regardless of modality (face-to-face and distance education programs).
The regulation identifies with specificity what educational programs require notifications – read carefully to assess your institution’s programs.
Public or General notifications must be made available regarding all states and territories whether the curriculum meets, does not meet, or no determination made regarding the state educational requirements.
Direct or Specific notifications are required to prospective students if the student is located in a state where the curriculum does not meet or no determination made. For the enrolled student notifications are required within 14 calendar days of the institution making a determination that the curriculum does not meet the state educational requirements where the student is located.
Institutions should be aware that for courses and programs subject to SARA Policy, the institution must supply notifications as directed in Section 5.2 of the SARA Manual. These required notifications were recently revised to more closely align with the Federal regulations.
Bottom Line
Institutions must be aware of the location of their students.
Institutions must be aware of the location of their students.
The initial March 5, 2020 guidance, from the Department of Education in response to the pandemic, specifically addressed state authorization compliance flexibility during that spring semester for Federal compliance for purposes of Title IV. However, State compliance is separate from Federal compliance. Very few states publicly shared flexibilities for state institutional approval for the activities of the institution occurring in another state. More than 2000 institutions that participate in SARA did not need to seek additional state approvals, but institutions in California and other non-SARA participating institutions found and are continuing to find that they must seek state by state institutional approval if their students are located in another state.
No flexibilities were provided by the Department in regard to providing professional licensure notifications. There again, institutions must know where their students are located in order to send any required direct notifications.
Conclusion
Learn more about the complexities of out-of-state activity compliance from the resources available on the WCET | State Authorization Network (SAN) website. Stay tuned for more highlights from the Playbook and the deep dive appendices associated with the Playbook. Future WCET Frontiers posts will address financial aid and accessibility. You can access the Playbook in its entirety on Every Learner Everywhere’s site and can access the appendices on Every Learner’s resource site, Solve.
In response to the pandemic, accrediting agencies acted creatively in applying their quality assurance processes in an uncertain and changing world. Today’s guest post provides insights about how one accrediting agency (the Higher Learning Commission) responded to this challenge and their view of the future. We requested this article because we openly wondered when accrediting agencies will expect their institutions to fully meet their standards that may have been relaxed due to COVID-19.
This post 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 authored by WCET. The publication addressed the reality that when courses move from face-to-face to mostly digital formats (online, emergency remote, blended, hyflex, or whatever permutation you offer), a different set of federal, state, and accreditation rules may apply. The Playbook gives background on several regulations, resources to understand them, and recommendations on how to comply.As we discussed last week, over the next several weeks we will be releasing a deeper look at the Playbook and highlight the appendices on topics such as accreditation, state authorization, financial aid, and accessibility.
To start us off, Karen J. Solomon, Vice President of Accreditation Relations at the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), affords an inside look at the steps that they took and what actions they will take in the future. Speaking of the future, the Department of Education has allowed accrediting agencies to extend waivers past the end of this year. In news from HLC, it appears that they have chosen not to extend any waivers into 2021.
Thank you to Karen for this insightful contribution.
–Russ Poulin, WCET
Introduction
The spring 2020 COVID-19 pandemic was a catalyst for higher education to embrace online learning, out of both necessity and convenience to serve learners. Institutional accrediting agencies also reacted, making swift and significant changes. The past several months lend insightful foreshadowing into the future of teaching and learning in higher education. Institutional accrediting agencies responded with agility and alignment to federal guidance and waivers of regulations. As with any major shift, there are many moving parts to help stakeholders track the changes taking place.
Collectively, members of the Council of Regional Accreditation Commissions (C-RAC) worked diligently to continue quality assurance evaluations at the same time. Accreditors worked within the guidance provided by the U.S. Department of Education (the Department) in response to the public health emergency, providing accreditors the opportunity to waive certain requirements for institutions including the opportunity for institutions to transition to distance education and for accrediting agencies to conduct virtual site visits. While institutions provided swift and significant changes, without traditional faculty and student preparation for the shift to teaching in a distance education environment, it is critical for higher education to now focus on a future that relies on online learning.
While institutions provided swift and significant changes, without traditional faculty and student preparation for the shift to teaching in a distance education environment, it is critical for higher education to now focus on a future that relies on online learning.
– Karen Solomon
Immediate Response — Spring 2020
Virtual Evaluations
Recognizing the Department’s guidance, the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) Board adopted a temporary emergency policy to empower agency leadership to quickly provide opportunities for institutions to react to the unfolding crisis. The timing of the action was significant; the agency was in the height of its spring evaluation season with more than sixty institutions scheduled to be reviewed by peer reviewer teams traveling to campuses.
HLC determined that to ensure business continuity it needed to implement virtual evaluations. The Department’s guidance required a follow-up visit to occur as soon as possible given travel restrictions or other safety considerations. It was important to maintain the long-term schedule as much as possible in order to have a sufficient number of peer reviewers available throughout the upcoming academic year. Based on the complexities of a few cases, some evaluations were rescheduled to fall 2020.
HLC worked to ensure consistency and integrity in the evaluations. Training was delivered to all of the peer reviewers assigned to the spring evaluations. Most of the involved institutions had already submitted their required report prior to the announcement of the new visit protocol so information about the transitions typically occurred during interviews between the institution and the team. Institutions were encouraged to use their technology infrastructure as much as possible, so many of the meetings were held synchronously over the internet in secure environments. When this was not possible, conference calls were organized. Reports from institutions and peer reviewers indicated the shift to a virtual evaluation occurred relatively smoothly.
The question has been raised whether distance education was evaluated during this time. A review of distance education is embedded across the HLC’s Criteria for Accreditation and the focus on quality is expected wherever and however courses and programs are delivered, whether offered 100% online, in hybrid or hyflex formats. All peer reviewers are trained to evaluate distance education. Review of distance education continued throughout the virtual evaluations, depending on the institution’s current approval status to offer courses and/or programs through this modality.
Notification Process
The agency wanted to know about the changes taking place at all member institutions, not just those scheduled for a spring 2020 visit. All institutions were expected to inform HLC as plans took shape, through a swiftly developed notification process, in order to ensure quality and continuity in instructional activity. The form was used to report on:
adjustments to normal operations,
changes to the previously reported adjustments to normal operations and,
determinations that an institution was resuming on-ground operations.
Because of the fluid situation unfolding, some institutions submitted multiple notification forms over the months regarding adjustments such as the length of academic year, assignment of grades, waiving graduation requirements, and the use of distance education and accelerated formats. Institutions were expected to outline plans for assuring quality, plans for business continuity, and communication plans for their constituents.
Distance Education Waivers
Because of the Department’s guidance regarding waivers related to the transition to distance education (and HLC’s recent temporary policy), institutions could request a temporary waiver of normal HLC processes for approving distance education. This was embedded in the notification process. HLC recognized the shift in spring 2020 to distance education for almost all programs, was a rapid and unplanned response to an exploding crisis. Institutions that lacked the capacity to initiate or expand their distance education offerings were counseled to consider developing arrangements with other institutions that had capacity and expertise offering programming in this manner.
HLC received a relatively small number of waiver requests. Out of a membership of approximately 970 institutions, 16% requested and were granted waivers and an additional 5% indicated that they did not plan to go outside of their current level of approval for distance education and would not be requesting a waiver. Most of the institutions that were granted waivers were small institutions that offered a highly specialized residential experience, were located in rural areas where connectivity could have been a challenge, or were single-purpose institutions offering highly experiential training or development.
Next Steps
Institutional Evaluations
Given the current state of the pandemic, HLC is working to identify peer reviewers that are willing to utilize alternative travel options (as described below) to keep our work going. Each institution that completed a virtual evaluation in spring 2020 will participate in a verification visit. All previously scheduled comprehensive evaluations for fall 2020 will be conducted with the majority of the team working virtually. It is expected that one member will travel to the campus simultaneously while the team is working. If it is impossible to have a reviewer on campus, then HLC will resume the verification visit protocol and the visit will be rescheduled to spring 2021. HLC recognizes that some institutions will need to reschedule if students are not on-campus during the term when the peer reviewer is scheduled to visit.
The question remains whether peer reviewers will be allowed or want to travel during this time. Many peer reviewers may work for institutions that are not allowing employees to travel during the pandemic while others may prefer to defer visiting campuses until it is deemed safe to travel. HLC conducted a survey in early summer to identify peer reviewers that expressed interest in being involved in the visit process. At the time of writing this overview, the results of the survey had not yet been tabulated and should be available in mid-July 2020 so assignments can be made for visits beginning in September 2020.
In late June 2020, all institutions were informed that they should continue to notify HLC of adjustments being made to protect the health and safety of their campus communities.
As HLC staff communicate with institutions, it has become apparent there are challenges to developing definitive plans due to the uncertain nature of how the pandemic will continue to impact their communities, students, and personnel.
This second wave of notification informs HLC of the steps taken to ensure quality and continuity in its instructional activity for the upcoming academic year.
Extension of Distance Education Waivers 2.0
In summer 2020, HLC allowed institutions to request a waiver that will extend to December 31, 2020 due to additional guidance released by the Department. In order to be granted this extension, institutions must demonstrate a commitment and plans related to hallmarks of quality in distance education as published on HLC’s website. The request for the extension required the submission of detailed information regarding its efforts to ensure the integrity of academic offerings through curriculum changes, reconsideration of assessment of student learning, faculty development and support, and services to support student learners in an online environment.
Institutions have been informed they must submit a complete distance education application for review if they anticipate they will need to offer distance education options into 2021 (including Spring 2021).
Future Focus
In recent months, HLC’s President, Barbara Gellman-Danley, has documented many of the trends that have occurred (and are continuing to occur) during the health crisis. During its June 2020 meeting, HLC’s Board of Trustees took time to discuss the challenges facing higher education in the midst of significant changes to enrollment and resources, the training needed for faculty (and also for students) to thrive in distance education environments, and the challenge of the credit hour as institutions rethink what a semester of learning could look like. They raised questions about the projected ‘new normal’ and how the process of quality assurance will need to evolve.
HLC will review its hallmarks for distance education, updated in 2009, to support institutions exploring and expanding distance education on a greater scale in the coming year.
– Karen Solomon
HLC will review its hallmarks for distance education, updated in 2009, to support institutions exploring and expanding distance education on a greater scale in the coming year. Many of the institutions receiving waivers may have minimal knowledge and resources to develop distance education offerings that follow the hallmarks of quality. HLC is working to provide member education opportunities throughout the 2020-2021 year to enhance awareness and develop good practices at institutions.
The ability to maintain business continuity will support ongoing, regularly scheduled reviews of institutions to enable HLC to continue to ensure quality during the time when the landscape of higher education is undergoing significant disruption and change. Institutions will be expected to evaluate their efforts to provide a sound academic experience to ensure student success and equity in education.
HLC plans to study the information provided through the notification process to learn about the innovative strategies institutions proposed, modified and launched in response to the need to embrace online learning, out of both necessity and convenience in serving learners. With an eye toward nimble response to crises, the Higher Learning Commission is committed to outcomes measurements and quality assurance for all students.
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 the administrative. For faculty and academic administrators new to teaching online, this rapid shift was often overwhelming and disorienting as they tried to simultaneously master unfamiliar technology tools, federal and state regulations, online student support systems, and pedagogical approaches.
Addressing the complex web of federal, state, and accreditation regulations governing distance education was a secondary concern for many institutions, and even the institutional personnel knowledgeable of this regulatory landscape were hard pressed to keep up with the growing numbers of waivers and regulatory interpretations governing distance education issued by the Department of Education beginning on March 5, 2020.
The Playbook is divided into five sections—accreditation, federal financial aid regulations, state authorization and professional licensure, course level regulations, and student civil rights. The Playbook also includes an explanation of the regulatory triad, a discussion of how to use the Playbook on your campus, and links to several appendices that feature deeper dives on quality and accreditation, federal financial aid, accessibility, and state and professional licensure. Taken together, the Playbook is a thorough reference examining the largest and most important regulatory issues.
ACCREDITATION
As a critical component of the regulatory triad, accrediting agencies are responsible for evaluating the academic quality of an institution and/or its programs. The U.S. Department of Education, in turn, relies on accreditor actions to attest to academic quality for federal financial aid eligibility and maintains a list of Department-approved accrediting agencies. Accreditors must fulfill a number of Departmental requirements to retain recognition, including requirements associated with the approval of distance education at the institutional and possibly programmatic levels. This section includes information on institutional accreditation and programmatic accreditation.
Institutional accreditation
Under normal circumstances, the approval to offer distance education is a multistep process that includes approval from an institution’s accreditor as well as the U.S. Department of Education (the Department). In early March 2020, the Department announced that it would waive regulations requiring Departmental approval of distance education programs. Additionally, the Department announced that it would permit accreditors to also waive distance education review requirements. The Department of Education issued an initial waiver on March 5, 2020, and updated that guidance on August 21, 2020. The waiver of both Departmental distance education approval and allowing accreditors to waive distance education approval is now extended through December 31, 2020, or the end of the payment period that includes the termination of the federally declared pandemic-related national emergency.
Programmatic accreditation
Program accreditors provide assurance of educational quality for specialized academic and technical programs at postsecondary institutions. Program accreditation is in addition to institutional accreditation. In select professions, it is required by a state licensing board to provide program approval for licensure in specialized fields such as nursing, medicine, law, and education. Many programmatic accreditors have requirements regarding distance education programs in their fields and have offered more flexible requirements around the modality of instruction, experiential learning, and grading policies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the Department of Education is offering certain flexibilities through December 31, 2020, or the payment period that includes the termination of the federally declared pandemic-related national emergency. These flexibilities include virtual site visits and waivers for distance education requirements.
FEDERAL FINANCIAL AID ELIGIBILITY
The second component of the regulatory triad involves the federal government and its regulatory role associated with financial aid. An institution’s ability to remain eligible for federal financial aid, especially Title IV programs such as Pell Grants, is connected to a number of financial aid regulations including regulations about course and program modality, interactions between faculty and students, and student satisfactory academic progress. In addition to these Title IV financial aid regulations, administrators should also be aware of distance education specific regulations that impact student use of GI Bill benefits.
Correspondence education, distance education, and regular and substantive interaction
In addition to Title IV financial aid regulations, administrators should also be aware of distance education specific regulations that impact the categorization of courses as correspondence education or distance education, including the presence of regular and substantive interactions. The Department of Education has NOT waived any regulations related to the definition of correspondence courses, distance education, and regular and substantive interaction due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. On August 24, 2020, the Department of Education released final correspondence and distance education regulations.
Determining last date of attendance for students who withdraw without notice
There are many factors which may compel a student not to complete a course in which they are enrolled. While institutions have policies requiring students to notify the institution of their intention to withdraw, sometimes students simply drop out without notice and that triggers requirements for the financial aid office to determine when the student stopped attending classes. For students that withdraw before the end of the term, the financial aid office conducts a Return to Title IV (R2T4) calculation to ascertain the balance between how much aid the student earned for that term and how much was disbursed. For in-person courses, mere proof that a student attended a class is sufficient, while there is a higher bar for distance education courses. If an institution moves to remote or online learning for a term, they are subject to the higher bar of proof. The Department of Education has NOT waived any regulations related to the determination of the last date of attendance for students who withdraw without notice from courses, regardless of the modality used in offering the course.
Satisfactory academic progress
In addition to paying attention to the differences between correspondence and distance education, regular and substantive interactions, and tracking last date of attendance for Title IV financial aid eligibility, institutions should also be aware of the impact that pandemic-related decisions could have on satisfactory academic progress (SAP) and student eligibility for continued Title IV federal assistance. The Department of Education issued initial guidance on satisfactory academic progress on March 5, 2020 and updated that guidance on August 21, 2020. Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) waivers and guidance are now extended through December 31, 2020, or the end of the payment period that includes the termination of the federally declared pandemic-related national emergency.
GI Bill benefits for student veterans
The GI Bill provides benefits for students who are veterans or who have family members using their veteran’s benefits and are enrolled in a postsecondary degree or certificate program. Both students and institutions must meet certain criteria to remain eligible for these benefits. Because of restrictions placed on the use of GI Bill benefits for distance education, the COVID-19 pandemic had a heavier impact on students using GI Bill benefits. Prior to the enactment of emergency legislation by Congress, the GI Bill directed that veterans who take all of their courses in a term at a distance receive only half of the Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) that veterans who enroll completely on-campus or in a mix of face-to-face and online courses receive. Due to COVID-19, Congress enacted two pieces of emergency federal legislation to support veterans including providing full Basic Allowance for Housing benefits for veterans studying at a distance.The second piece of legislation ensures the continuing payment for work study jobs affected by the pandemic.
Consortium agreements allow a student to receive financial aid from their degree-granting institution while also taking courses at another institution. These types of agreements predate COVID-19. On March 5, 2020, the United States Department of Education (the Department) reminded institutions of this option and clarified that such consortia agreements may be temporary and used during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Department has also given accreditors permission to waive residency requirements associated with graduation. These waivers are now extended through December 31, 2020, or the end of the payment period that includes the termination of the federally declared pandemic-related national emergency.
STATE AUTHORIZATION AND LICENSURE
The third component of the regulatory triad that impacts institutions offering distance education are state agencies. In addition to accreditation and financial aid regulations, institutions may also be impacted by state authorization and professional licensure requirements as they offer more distance education, especially to students residing in other states.
State authorization of distance education
If an institution offers activities to any students located in another state, then the institution must obtain authorization according to the regulations of that state. States vary in how they regulate online learning occurring within their borders. This responsibility applies even for courses that started the academic term as face-to-face and then converted to remote instruction in response to COVID-19. The Department of Education guidance from March 5, 2020, provides flexibility regarding state compliance for purposes of Title IV. There are a number of states that have not issued any waivers for institutions that are not participants in the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement. However, that guidance does not absolve the institution from compliance with any state requirements applicable to the activities the institution is conducting.
Professional licensure notifications for students
Institutions must provide notifications for prospective and enrolled students regarding on-ground and distance education programs leading to professional licensure or certification to indicate whether or not the curriculum meets state requirements or indicate that no determination is made. Institutions that offer academic programs leading to professional licensure or certification must adhere to state and federal laws and regulations regarding these programs. State laws, regulations, or requirements may require an institution to obtain program approval to offer instruction and activities leading to licensure or certification in that state. New federal regulations, effective July 1, 2020, require institutions participating in Title IV programs to provide general and direct notifications regarding educational requirements to prospective and enrolled students in programs leading to professional licensure. These notifications are required for all programs leading to professional licensure or certifications regardless of the modality of instruction. COVID-19 may have affected state educational requirements in some states and professions. However, the Department of Education has not offered any waiver or flexibility about providing professional licensure notifications.
COURSE LEVEL REGULATIONS
In addition to the regulations that impact institutions and programs, there are also regulations for which the impact is felt mostly at the course level, especially in an online, blended, or hyflex course environment. Two such policies that institutions should be particularly aware of are the regulations associated with student identity verification and intellectual property and the use of copyrighted materials in online classes.
Student identity verification
Instructors everywhere want to curtail cheating on exams, plagiarism, submission of purchased essays written by others, and all forms of academic dishonesty by students. While such activities occur in all modalities of course offerings, only for distance education is there a requirement regarding student identity verification. This regulation is among the standards that institutional accrediting agencies must apply to the institutions that they oversee. Essentially, the accrediting agency must require that institutions have processes to ensure that the student who registers for a course is the same one who academically engages in the course. As faculty move into online courses, they should be aware that accreditors will be placing an additional focus on this issue. On March 5, 2020, the Department of Education issued guidance to both institutions and accreditors in response to the pandemic and in the interest of maintaining academic continuity. As part of that guidance, the Department provided accreditors with the option of waiving certain accreditation criteria during the state of national emergency including accreditor review requirements for student identify verification and student notification of charges associated with proctored exams. These waivers are now extended through December 31, 2020, or the end of the payment period that includes the termination of the federally declared pandemic-related national emergency
Fair use in using digitized materials or videos
In a traditional face-to-face course, faculty are accustomed to using many kinds of copyrighted materials. Faculty may rely on the concept of fair use, which is a legal doctrine that permits the use of copyrighted works, but only under certain conditions. When a course moves from face-to-face to a remote, hybrid, blended, or hyflex format, the calculus may change for whether the work is still covered by fair use or not. While the factors for determining fair use remain the same, the act of digitizing materials and the opportunity for increased access and distribution of the work change the calculation. The Department of Education has NOT waived any regulations related to copyright or fair use provisions in courses that have transitioned to remote instruction due to COVID-19.
STUDENT CIVIL RIGHTS
A number of regulations protect student civil rights. None of these regulations are unique to online education but may take on different meanings in the online classroom. As institutions develop more online and hybrid courses in response to the pandemic, or even shift to remote instruction again, administrators should be aware of their responsibilities to protect student civil rights.
Since the early 1970s, higher education accessibility for students with disabilities has been the subject of U.S. statutes. Starting with the 1973 Federal Rehabilitation Act and continuing with the 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, higher education institutions have been responsible for providing students with appropriate and reasonable accommodations. In 2019, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights opened investigations of over 200 schools for accessibility violations including those related to technology and communication. The Department of Education has NOT waived any regulations related to copyright or fair use provisions in courses that have transitioned to remote instruction due to COVID-19.
Title IX
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex at institutions receiving federal funding. Department regulations, as of August 14, 2020, require institutions to hold live hearings that allow cross-examination, narrow the scope of sexual harassment related complaints, and allow institutions to eliminate mandatory reporting requirements. The Department of Education has not waived any regulations related to Title IX.
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)
Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), institutions are required to protect a student’s personally identifiable information (PII). The Department of Education has not waived any regulations related to FERPA and student privacy.
Clery Act
The Clery Act is a federal consumer protection law that requires institutions to disclose crimes and emergencies on or near their campuses. Institutions are not required to provide ongoing notifications and updates regarding coronavirus cases on campus nor are they required to provide information on “cases among individuals who are not attending classes, working, or residing on campus or to require notifications to such individuals” (Office of Postsecondary Education, 2020). This guidance is effective through June 30, 2020, but may be extended at the discretion of the Department. The Department of Education has not waived any regulations related to the Clery Act.
Coming Attractions: Deep Dives on a Few Regulatory Areas
Over the next several weeks, WCET Frontiers will highlight the Playbook and the deep dive appendices associated with the Playbook. Blog posts will include discussion of the role of accreditation and quality during the pandemic, student financial aid regulations, state authorization and professional licensure, and accessibility. You can access the Playbook at Every Learner Everywhere’s site and can access the appendices on Every Learner’s resource site, Solve.
Over the past two weeks, Frontiers has featured its series on academic integrity and cheating syndicates. The first post considered the spectrum of threats facing higher education and our students and the second looked at the practices cheating sites use to entice (and trap?) students.
To finish up the series, I’m happy to welcome Shannon Riggs, Executive Director of Academic Programs and Learning Innovation at Oregon State University Ecampus and member of the WCET Steering Committee, who joins us today to discuss a survey WCET sent out earlier this year to members to learn how institutions are handling these issues.
A huge thank you to those who worked with us on this series and to those who answered our survey and participated in additional interviews.
Enjoy the read and enjoy your day,
Lindsey Downs, WCET
Two previous blog posts in this series have discussed what cheating syndicates are and how they work, and the impact of these syndicates on students. Faced with this threat to academic integrity and the value of earned degrees, institutions in higher education are developing effective strategies to fight against these nefarious syndicates, but may need to do more to effectively defeat them.
The Challenge (s)
There are at least two factors that make cheating syndicates particularly challenging to combat:
The insidiousness and deception with which they operate, and
The varying degrees to which institutions are organized in prevention and response strategies.
Earlier this year, WCET surveyed its members to learn more about ways in which the problem of cheating syndicates is being addressed. Several respondents were contacted for more in-depth interviews. Though the number of survey responses received was fairly low (<10 institutions), several exemplar strategies emerged.
Figure 1 Institutional Responses to Cheating Syndicates
Some institutions reported taking a single-strategy solution, and others reported taking a multi-pronged approach. In general, response strategies fell into six basic categories:
faculty development,
student education,
course design approaches,
policy adjustments,
vendor-based solutions, and
technological prevention and response.
The Fight
Faculty Development
Because third-party cheating sites have emerged so recently and their operations have evolved quickly, many faculty are unaware of their existence and how they operate. Faculty training is needed to raise awareness about what cheating syndicates are and how they work and needs to be updated as cheating site operations change.
When faculty are informed about how cheating sites operate, they can warn students away from these sites and guide them toward more appropriate resources and study aids. For example, one departmental director shared that their faculty post announcements in their classes warning students about specific cheating syndicate websites and invite collaboration with the instructor in determining which sites are legitimate and which to avoid.
Student Education
Ashleigh Graham, resolution service manager at the University of Phoenix, reports that they are updating student education about cheating sites using communication methods that effectively reach students, including:
burst learning videos,
social media infographics, and
a shift from remediation-specific “how to cite” instruction to a more holistic approach that helps students understand how to approach papers, research, and synthesize information.
Stephanie Slaughter, resolution service manager at Phoenix, states they are also working on additional resources that address why students may be drawn by cheating sites to begin with, such as time management issues, lack of understanding about how research works, and struggles discerning the credibility of sources.
In addition to teaching students why use of these sites may constitute academic integrity, students may also need to be redirected to more appropriate, legitimate supports that require better time management and more effort to access, such as writing centers, tutors, teaching assistants and faculty office hours.
Course Design (and Redesign)
Course design strategies can be used to help decrease the opportunities for cheating and also teach students about academic honesty. Institutions reported that “assignment design and instructional strategies [can] make cheating less likely.” Requiring students to write papers in stages, for example, makes it more difficult to use an entire paper from an illegitimate source. Project-based learning, presentations with question and answer periods, authentic assessments, and collaborative writing can also be effective deterrents to cheating (and more importantly, effective learning experiences!).
In addition to strategic course design strategies, regular course redevelopment can be an effective strategy. Chris Small, academic resources and technology specialist at Southern New Hampshire University, advocates for frequent project refresh cycles to make assignments posted at cheating sites quickly obsolete. Small also recommends pooling assignments such as case studies so that students are working to master the same learning objectives with different learning materials.
Another strategy to combat cheating sites may be to update university policies regarding academic integrity. Outdated policies may not sufficiently address the use of cheating sites at all. At the University of Maryland Global Campus, Dan Gallagher, director of the writing center, and Jen Simonds, assistant VP for academic integrity, report that UMGC updated its academic integrity policy to specifically prohibit uploading course materials to external websites. Dean of e-Learning at Ocean County College, Vivian Lynn, reports that OCC updated its academic dishonesty policy to include online proctoring and banned VPNs for online course content access.
Vendor-Based Solutions
The use of vendor-provided technologies and services to prevent and detect academic dishonesty is not new. Many are familiar with the plagiarism detection and prevention software that has been available for many years. Exam proctoring is another common strategy employed to prevent and detect academic integrity violations. Some institutions combine vendor-based solutions with more traditional methods of ensuring academic integrity.
Many institutions use a variety of live proctoring strategies in on-site and virtual formats. Oregon State University, due to limitations for on-site proctoring related to the pandemic, recently accelerated its transition to automated online proctoring and now provides free and unlimited artificial intelligence proctoring for all students, on-campus and online.
Technological Solutions
In addition to vendor-based solutions, some institutions are implementing more custom technological solutions to prevent and detect integrity violations involving cheating sites. Chris Small from Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), for example, reports significant success in contracting with a company for web-crawling services to identify assessment materials when they are uploaded to a third-party cheating site, followed by legal take-down notices. UMGC created their own similar web-crawling software to find proprietary materials uploaded to cheating sites, and uses a bot to automatically send take-down notices. SNHU and UMGC are also implementing the use of I.P. address identity authentication. Non-visible watermarking and the use of meta-data on institutional documents are additional technological strategies these and other institutions are exploring as strategies to combat cheating sites.
Let’s Get Ready to Rumble
It is important to note that cheating syndicates are not a problem only for online education providers. After all, students in traditional brick-and-mortar classes and those taking classes remotely all have access to the internet. Even before the pandemic, most students today take courses in a variety of modalities in pursuit of their degrees, ranging from wholly face-to-face, to web-enhanced, blended, hybrid, and fully online.
To successfully ensure academic integrity, professionals in higher education, regardless of the modalities in which we teach, should consider the following recommendations:
Identify the strengths and opportunities for improvement in the fight against cheating syndicates using these strategies:
faculty development,
student education,
course design approaches,
policy language,
available vendor-based solutions, and
custom technological prevention and response strategies.
Recognize that academic dishonesty has become more complex, and that a more sophisticated, multi-pronged approach to preventing and detecting integrity violations is likely warranted.
Seek broad participation from across your institution to create a coordinated and systematic approach to preventing and detecting academic integrity violations. Consider including academic units from various disciplines, centers for teaching and learning, student conduct professionals, academic technologies departments, student services, writing and tutoring centers, academic advisors, distance education departments, student government representatives, and institutional legal counsel.
Coordination amongst various units at individual institutions—and among various institutions of higher education—will likely be necessary to fully comprehend the threat and to formulate and operationalize an effective response.
Our students and our combined interest in the value the degrees we provide make this worthy of our efforts.
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