Classes, calendars & compliance challenges

Tidball began by highlighting the federal guidelines around credit hours in that, “the Higher Learning Commission requires institutions to have policies and procedures to conform with credit hour requirements.” The panelists briefly referenced their own institutional policies - credit hour information, instructional time, and expected academic work - and then discussed case studies. 

 

Hornberger, VP for Enrollment Management and Registrar, began by discussing what his institution learned as the result of preparation for and outcomes of an HLC visit to Missouri State University. The preparations began by reporting on a years worth of classes (fall, spring, summer) from their SIS, Banner, to look at contact hours assigned versus credit hours assigned and determining any mismatches based on federal guidelines. Ultimately, the HLC visit and resulting report provided the Registrar’s office with more authority in monitoring credit hours and, “has been helpful when receiving pushback from departments.” In addition, the Registrar’s office took action on creating calculation tables/charts to more easily determine contact hours based on credit hours allowing for departments to be more proactive with addressing potential issues. Hornberger also discussed policy changes to the credit hour definition to establish more flexibility, provide charts to make it easier to understand, and using the federal definition of contact hours rather than attempting to interpret in university policy. 

 

The University of Minnesota also implemented a compliance project based on their HLC visit, which has created more engagement with the curriculum committee and soliciting regular stakeholder feedback. One of the main areas of clarification that the project has been able to address is the variances in individualized instruction and experimental/clinical rotations and setting the expectation that the credit hours/contact hours expectation is still the same even with classes that may not be scheduled in a “standard” way. 

 

Tidball began by outlining the federal financial aid regulations surrounding calendaring:

1. Terms cannot overlap

2. Terms need to be substantially equal in length

3. Classes should fall within the term or slightly outside of a term

 

The biggest compliance challenge that the panel discussed was that there are still a lot of non-standard parts of the term. Hornberger shared that his institution has reduced the number of non-standard terms from 70+ to 28 in the summer, 15 in the spring, and 15 in fall. A lot of this has to do with having frank conversations with departments about what they are trying to achieve with their classes and finding the appropriate way to schedule. A member of the audience shared the importance of engaging financial aid colleagues in the conversations as well in order to have a well-rounded discussion so as not to negatively impact students. 

 

Stanfield remarked on an intriguing way that his institution is looking at calendaring. They have a rubric method for determining how classes fall within the session. Along with that they are reshaping the academic calendar - moving circumflex calendaring. He likened it to “throwing a pebble in the lake and following the ripples.”

 

The panel then opened up the floor and there was robust discussion on a variety of topics:

- Contact hour variances based on delivery method (e.g., online), final exams, and undergraduate versus graduate

- Extended sessions and study away

- Articulating academic calendars - standard or otherwise - to the community

- Processes in place for handling unique calendaring requests from faculty

- General issues related to Title IV 

 

The conversations could have continued well beyond the slotted time, but the overall message was ensuring that policies are in place and having the right individuals at the table for these sometimes challenging discussions.