1.1 What is RSI?

Learning Objective: Faculty can name the components of RSI.

Regulatory Context

Instructor-initiated Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI) is part of the federal Education Department regulations for institutions that disburse federal financial aid to students. RSI requirements govern interactions in asynchronous online courses. At Highline, this means courses that either occur entirely online (Online Asynchronous, or OA), or online but with five or fewer on-campus activities (Online Asynchronous w/In-person, or OB).

The RSI regulations seek to distinguish correspondence courses (which are not eligible for federal financial aid) from distance education courses (which are eligible). RSI regulations state that instructors must provide students with opportunities to engage with their instructor about academic content in a predictable and scheduled manner. Without sufficient RSI, a distance education course would be considered a correspondence course by the Department of Education (and with that would come many problems).

Here's the relevant part of the regulation (34 CFR §600.2):

For purposes of this definition, substantive interaction is engaging students in teaching, learning, and assessment, consistent with the content under discussion, and also includes at least two of the following—

1. 1. Providing direct instruction;
  2. Assessing or providing feedback on a student's coursework;
  3. Providing information or responding to questions about the content of a course or competency;
  4. Facilitating a group discussion regarding the content of a course or competency; or
  5. Other instructional activities approved by the institution's or program's accrediting agency.

An institution ensures regular interaction between a student and an instructor or instructors by, prior to the student's completion of a course or competency

1. 1. Providing the opportunity for substantive interactions with the student on a predictable and scheduled basis commensurate with the length of time and the amount of content in the course or competency; and
  2. Monitoring the student's academic engagement and success and ensuring that an instructor is responsible for promptly and proactively engaging in substantive interaction with the student when needed on the basis of such monitoring, or upon request by the student.

Let's translate this a bit:

Regular: "predictable and scheduled" -- At Highline, this means interactions happen weekly.
Substantive: regarding or focused on course content -- conversations about the course content and detailed feedback on assignments are, but interactions about logistics, like deadline extensions or exam dates aren't.
Interaction: the regulation states five categories for types of interaction; starting with the next page, we'll expand on these.
Monitoring... engagement: reviewing the student's progress and grades holistically, and contacting the student about that status.

There's one more requirement from another piece of the financial aid regulation: the course must include a substantive (related to academic content of the course) assignment due by the third day of the class. More on that in a bit.

Further Clarification

RSI dashboard dial showing types of activities and their interaction level

The OSCQR Rubric, Dashboard, and Process are made available by the Online Learning Consortium, Inc.

Regular

RSI-compliant conversations should occur regularly: at Highline that means at least once a week. They should be predicable. Hosting office hours at the same time each week, and having that information be posted in your syllabus, in the course, or referenced in announcements is one way to ensure that interaction is predictable and scheduled. Posting weekly announcements or writing a weekly content-focused email that addresses the course material and questions that have come up can be a predictable and scheduled way to communicate with students.

Early in the quarter, we recommend communicating more frequently. That will support building a community among your students. Later in the quarter, you’ll be able to dial back a bit, especially as feedback on assignments takes some of the communication load.

Substantive

Academically substantive interactions both support students’ perception of the presence of the instructor and keep them focused on the course learning objectives. Examples of substantive interactions are:

conversations about the content and concepts being taught in the course
personalized, detailed feedback about a student’s performance on assignments and assessments
- “Good job” or “Great work!” isn’t sufficient (and is not great feedback, in general).
- "The way you contrasted topic x with topic y helped me as the reader to better understand the nuance between the two ideas" or "When you apply this theory, remember to consider the following issues..." is specific and personalized to the student's goals.
information that would help a student who did not earn full credit understand how to improve
information for a student who did well on the assignment know what was good about it and where to focus for next time
information about common misconceptions or errors that are coming up in class assignments or places where students have traditionally struggled with the topic
not logistics (e.g. responses to student requests to open up a quiz, or emailing a student a reminder to send in an assignment)

Instructor-Initiated Interaction

An important part of the regulation is that instructors initiate the conversations with individual and groups of students. This creates a sense that instructors are present in the class, and that the online activities are an important part of the learning process. Interaction initiated by instructors is how students know they aren’t being taught by a robot. Waiting until a student comes to you is not great teaching practice, especially when you have so many tools to allow you to see how students are doing in the course. And, it doesn't meet the RSI guidelines for an online course.

Although RSI documentation is for federal compliance and regulatory reasons, the practices that encompass RSI are research-based practices that reduce the perceived distance between teacher and student in an online course, have beneficial learning effects for students, and correlate to improved persistence and retention metrics for students.

Academic Monitoring

Academic monitoring includes looking at course activity, course analytics, evaluating the quality of student work submissions, or evaluating student understanding of content through exam or project performance. Then, instructors should act on the information gained by monitoring student progress and reach out to interact with the student. Academic monitoring should be both assignment specific and holistic to the entire course. During RSI documentation, you will be asked to explain how you are regularly monitoring your course.

Practice

This practice assignment uses an outside program called H5P. If you are having trouble with the page loading, check to ensure you have allowed pop-ups. If you are still having trouble, reach out to EdTech for support.