General
Since students at the University of Waterloo are admitted to Faculties, there are no distance education students as such, but rather the Faculty of Environment (or Arts or Science) students taking distance education courses. Academic responsibility for and control of distance education courses, then, resides in the Faculties that offer them. In the Faculty of Environment, courses are offered by departments; the relationship between distance education courses and the departments that offer them is the same as that which exists between departments and the courses they offer on campus. Departments/schools decide what courses to offer by distance education, select the appropriate professors to prepare them and perform the supervisory and evaluative functions that normally are associated with on-campus courses.
With the exceptions noted below, all regulations and procedures of the Faculty of Environment will apply to all the Faculty of Environment courses and to all the Faculty of Environment students, irrespective of the form in which the courses are offered or the manner in which the students are enrolled.
Admissions and Withdrawals
Although the normal guidelines of the Faculty of Environment with respect to admissions and withdrawals will be observed, the following clarifications and procedural modifications have specific application to distance education courses.
- Strict deadlines for admissions will be observed. Late applicants will be offered admission to a later term.
- The drop period and withdrawal period do not correspond to the on-campus dates. See the Centre for Extended Learning.
Student Advising
The online course should contain clear statements on degree requirements, program requirements, and course sequences, and should inform students that they may write directly to the professor in charge of the course they are taking should they have questions or encounter problems.
Course Preparation
- Only regular course offerings, appearing in the University of Waterloo calendar, may be prepared as distance education courses.
- Proposals to prepare new distance education courses or to reprepare old ones are completed by the academic departments/schools and forwarded to the Dean.
- A course proposed for distance education must have been taught at least once on campus by the instructor who intends to prepare it as a distance education course.
- Distance education courses should be reprepared about every 4 years.
- At all times, the courses actually offered by distance education will be determined by the particular departments/schools, with the consent of the Dean and the unit head.
Assignments
- Each distance education course must include a properly invigilated final examination which counts at least 40% of the course work.
- Each distance education course normally should include at least three, preferably more, written assignments per term, and provision must be made for feedback to students on a regular and continuing basis.
Evaluation
Every student each term is sent a form by the Centre for Extended Learning to evaluate the course he/she is taking. The results of these evaluations are sent to the instructors of the courses.
Enrolments
- The Dean and the chairs/directors may limit the enrolment in distance education courses as they see fit.
- The Centre for Extended Learning will inform the Dean weekly during the month prior to the beginning of the distance education course and during the first month of the course of the projected and actual enrolment of each course being offered.
- Only in exceptional cases may full-time students taking courses on campus in fall/winter/spring enroll in distance education courses, and only with the approval of the department/school undergraduate officer.
Last updated in October 2000