Embracing Regulatory Changes: Regular and Substantive Interaction

Presented by:

• Carrie Patterson, Assistant Professor, Communication Studies, Moreno Valley College
• Sara Nafzgar, Associate Professor, Communication Studies, Moreno Valley College

• Carrie Patterson is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Moreno Valley College. At Moreno Valley College Patterson Servers as the faculty chair of the Distance Education Committee and Faculty Co-Lead of the Distance Education Action Team.
• Sara Nafzgar is an Associate Professor at Moreno Valley College where she teaches Communication Studies, serves as the faculty lead for accreditation, and is a member of the Distance Education Action Team responsible for developing and maintaining the campus-wide peer-to-peer and faculty-to-student Canvas support shells.

Where’s the beef? This session will explain how Moreno Valley College shifted the culture and re-envisioned its Distance Education practices by embracing the newly approved Department of Education Distance Education Regulations. In 2020, while all colleges were facing the shift to remote instruction in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, MVC was also addressing an ACCJC Distance Education compliance requirement. The college had 18 months to demonstrate that it could ensure online courses met the standard of Regular & Substantive Interaction (RSI). During this period, the regulatory language related to RSI changed, and the college became early implementers of the new policy. Working with the district, MVC created and approved 6 new policies to ensure high quality distance education. In 2022, MVC was fully reaccredited, and the college has been widely praised for the work that was accomplished. The facilitators in this session will review how MVC taught over 300 faculty how to understand the policy changes by using fun frameworks (dust bunny, Wendy’s 1980’s commercial), catchy campaigns (RSI Week, Got 2? I do!), and customizable resources (RSI Tracker Table, RSI Checks, RSI templates, Communication Plan template, etc.).

Session Outcomes:

• Explain the new Department of Education and ACCJC definitions of regular and substantive interaction.
• Identify what would and would not be considered proactive, predictable, substantive interaction in an online course.
• Implement specific tools in their own courses to make Regular & Substantive Interaction (RSI) easily evident.

Session Resources:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZLmJPtq-70CIi3sIXn0STM2WmJhtDi1Mz48D3m54U0o/edit?usp=sharing

View the Session Recording