Policies and Guidelines

• The primary format of distance education at SLU.
• A distance-delivered course in which 75% or more of the instruction and interaction occurs online, with the instructor and students completing online activities at different times (“asynchronously”). Asynchronous online courses may include limited synchronous meetings.

• This format is limited at SLU, and is offered only with a dean’s approval.
• A distance-delivered course in which 75% or more of the instruction and interaction occurs online, with the instructor and students engaged in online or web conferencing activities at the same time (“synchronously”), on an established schedule that is published at the time of course registration.

• This format is limited at SLU (and is offered only with a dean’s approval).
• A co-synchronous course in which students learn together, in real time, with some students located together in an in-person classroom and some students participating in the live class session via web conferencing technology physically separated from the instructor. 
• Dual-mode courses have two distinct (cross-listed) sections. Students are required to register either for the in-person section or the remote participation section and to participate in the modality for which they register for the whole term. 

When the distance components of a course or program comprise less than 75% of the course/program, these are considered blended courses/programs. While some may refer to such courses/programs as “hybrid,” particularly for the purposes of program-level recruitment, internally the term used is blended. 

Currently, there are not yet institutional requirements governing the design of blended (hybrid) courses or programs. However, it is recommended that academic leaders apply, to the extent possible, the distance education expectations to blended courses/programs, as doing so will help ensure consistency and equity across students’ experiences in courses/programs that involve any degree of distance learning.

Note: there may be institutional requirements for blended courses/programs in the future.

SLU does not use the term “HyFlex” for any distance or blended courses, nor does it support the offering of distance courses in formats other than those described in the definitions above. SLU recognizes that courses designed to allow students regularly to move back and forth between in-person and online attendance – and/or courses designed to allow students to intermittently participate in in-person courses via asynchronous means – create significant workload inequities for instructors and students. Such courses also create difficulties with external compliance and reporting.

Thus, no courses at SLU should be advertised or designed as “HyFlex” at this time. As has always been true, an individual instructor is free to make temporary adjustments/accommodations for an individual student in a particular situation if they deem it appropriate to do so and if their chair/dean agrees that such temporary accommodations are reasonable and appropriate

While most distance offerings at SLU historically have been asynchronous in nature, the COVID-19 pandemic pushed SLU (and all of higher education) to expand the ways in which we think about distance education. Thus, our policies and practices were expanded to allow for synchronous online and dual-mode courses in contextually-appropriate circumstances. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic also demonstrated that actions taken to maintain instructional continuity in an emergency are not the same as intentionally-designed distance education. 

The literature has begun to settle on the term emergency remote instruction as a way to distinguish true distance education from the kinds of on-the-fly adaptations instructors and institutions may need to make in response to a given emergency situation.[1] Such situations certainly can occur, whether caused by a localized emergency impacting a single instructor or campus, or by a national/global concern, such as a pandemic. In such cases, the University will provide guidance to instructors about what is allowed and expected for instructional continuity. Note: See the University Guidance for Instructional Continuity for additional information.

[1] For high-level overviews, see: Charles Hodges et. al, “The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning,” Educause, Educause Review, March 27, 2020 and Members of the National Council for Online Education, “Emergency Remote Instruction is Not Quality Online Learning,” Inside Higher Education, February 2, 2022.