There are different requirements for different types of courses. Courses offered online that are completely knowledge-based will be delivered in a different approach than courses offered that offer conceptual and critical thinking approaches. Regardless of which approach is utilized to deliver educational information, students are responsible for completing all of their assignments. Assignments are weighted in order to ensure that a student is utilizing the learning management system, and attending their classes online for the appropriate time required as if they were taking the course on campus. Some students may finish assignments faster than others, but regardless the weighted assignments are designed to achieve academic engagement in an online universe.
Knowledge courses will have more lecture-based assignments, workbook projects, quizzes, and other forms of academic activity that will ensure and measure a student’s progress of knowledge. Courses that are more conceptual in terms of the intellectual data delivered, will engage in more discussion boards, chats, projects, and assignments that students in class on a residential campus would be except expected to participate in. Concept-based material and content require more cognitive and metacognitive measures, which means that the manner in which the instructor will be able to determine a student’s knowledge level is not solely through quizzes and tests but through discussion.
Students can expect discussion boards daily in all of their concept courses, as well as writing assignments, research, and general participation in knowledge base quizzes. An online course requires as much academic engagement on behalf of a student as required on campus. Online courses also have homework, which is work in addition to the online course. Students should expect to engage in homework assignments, and expect outside work to be graded towards their final grade. Please see your school catalog for more information on the grading system, and the syllabus in order to understand the categories measured.
Students attending a semester credit course online will attend the course for either eight weeks or 16 weeks. Depending on which schedule is offered, the student is expected to complete all assignments, discussion boards, participation in chat room sessions, and regular communication with the instructor via email. All of this information is collected by MOISE COLLEGE OF HEALTH SCIENCE for later review. All of your assignments are measured for academic engagement in order to ensure the student is “attending” the online course. It is not solely a measure of how many hours a student has logged into the course, but true attendance in online courses measured by the weight of the assignments.
A student can expect to be online for each course a minimum of five hours per day in a semester of 16 weeks. Therefore, if you are taking English Composition online, the student should expect no less than three hours per day of coursework for this one course. On a full-time schedule, students would be taking other courses online such as medical terminology, college algebra, introduction to speech, and other such courses. Students and a three-semester credit course can expect to spend three hours a week per course in a 16-week semester. In an eight-week semester, students can expect to have six hours a week per course. These hours are dedicated to “classwork”. These do not include homework assignments. Online students must recognize that the time spent online is not to be considered different in terms of length of time as they would spend on campus in each of their courses.