An online course at Southeast Missouri State University must be offered completely electronically and asynchronously. An online course must not require a student to come to any specific physical location at any time, nor can it require a student to log in to the course at a specific time for synchronous activities. All resources required for the course must be made available equally to students in any location. 

Online courses should provide a reasonable window of time for completion of any assignment. It is recommended this window would be a minimum of 48 hours during which the activity may be completed to allow flexibility for students with varying work schedules and time zones. There can be narrower time limits for specific assignments once they are started, such as exams, but the start times should be flexible as described above. 

Printed resources may be mailed to students; Textbook Rental mails textbooks to online students as needed. The instructor should ensure that any other required materials are available to students regardless of location within a reasonable delivery time. 

Online office hours may be provided using a resource such as Zoom, but provision should be made to accommodate students who are not available during scheduled office hour times. If group work is required, students may arrange synchronous or even face to face meetings among themselves, but provision should be made for students who have different schedules or whose location does not permit such meetings. 

The OSCQR (Open SUNY COTE Quality Review) rubric requires faculty to explicitly state the expected times for returning graded work and responding to communications. We recommend faculty respond to email or forum questions from students within 48 hours except during holidays. Times for returning graded work vary depending on types of assignments, but we encourage faculty to provide grades and feedback frequently throughout the term. 

• Blended course sections are to be placed in one of seven categories: OL10, OL25, OL33, OL50, OL67, OL75, and OL90. In each case the number is the approximate percentage of meeting time replaced by out-of-class activities. These are usually asynchronous online activities, but in some cases could be independent field or group work, as long as such work is not scheduled time in the presence of the instructor. We'll refer to these activities as "online" for short in the rest of the page. These categories will be entered as codes in the attribute field for the section. 
• A written plan must be submitted to the department chair for any course section to be scheduled as blended, giving the planned schedule of face to face meetings and describing the online activities. Changes or exceptions are allowed for canceling a F2F meeting due to unforeseen circumstances, but not for scheduling additional F2F meetings after registration begins. 
• Using the information provided in 2), the course must either show F2F meeting times in Banner via room scheduling or provide the schedule of F2F meetings in the SSATEXT or Section Text field. This information must be available to students at the time of registration. If the course has one day that is a designated for online (i.e. Monday, Wednesday, Friday class, meets online every Friday) then there will also need to be a second line added under Meeting Times and the Building set as Web for that line. 
• The comments entered in the SSATEXT (or Comments) field should reflect the specific dates, either when the class meets or does not meets, whichever is shorter. 
• For international students who are required to take a certain minimum number of face to face courses, blended courses in categories OL10,OL25, OL33, and OL50 will be considered face-to-face, while those in the other categories will be considered online. 
• For information on SACM restraints, please contact the International Office at x6863 

Blended courses are all about time spent face-to-face in classroom meetings. A standard face to face course meets for 750 minutes per credit hour. A blended course meets face to face for fewer than 750 minutes per credit hour and replaces that face to face meeting time with online activities or other activities that don’t require the student to be present at a set time. A course that meets 750 minutes per credit hour and also requires some online homework activities is not blended. You should let your students know what to expect so they can plan their semester time accordingly. 

Calculating the Percentage 

For a face to face class, 750 minutes of instruction constitute one credit hour, which means for a three-credit class, 2250 minutes are required. To determine the percentage of blending, count the number of minutes in face to face meetings: 

• For a three-credit class that meets Monday and Wednesday for 50 minutes each, this would be 2 times a week x 50 minutes x 15 weeks = 1500 minutes face to face 
• Subtract from the face to face minute requirement 
• For a three-credit class this is 2250 minutes. 2250 minutes total – 1500 minutes face to face = 750 minutes online 
• Divide the online minutes by the total minutes and multiply by 100 for the percentage: 750 minutes online / 2250 minutes face to face x 100 = 33% 

The example course would be OL33. If the percentage is not exactly one of the categories listed, choose the closest one. If it is 40 percent, use UL33; if it is 45 percent, use OL50. Exceptions are at the extremes – if even a small amount of face to face time is replaced with online work, but it is less than 10% use OL10. If more than 90% of the course is online, but there is at least one face to face meeting, use OL90. 

Resources for Blended Courses 

Blended Courses Training Presentation Slides 

Blended Courses Training Website 

Hyflex is a flexible course design model which presents the components in a course structure that gives students the option of attending sessions in the classroom, via Zoom video conferencing, participating online, or moving between all three. Students can change their mode of attendance weekly or by topic, according to need or preference. 

As the instructor, you are still in charge of your class and your pedagogy. The primary difference between Hyflex classes and other classes is that students can choose the content delivery mode that best fits their needs. 

• Students are never required to come to campus. 
• Students are not required to attend class lectures. 
• Assignments should be posted online and can be completed (or submitted) online. 
• Students should be offered the option of working on virtual teams for any team-based assignments. 
• Students are not required to come to class for exams. 

If you are interested, you may enroll yourself in the Hyflex Teaching Resources course for more help or information.