Key Policies Related to Teaching

Academic policies Links to an external site. that apply to students are developed and passed by the University Faculty Senate. Administrative policies and implementation procedures for academic policies are established by the Office of Undergraduate Education and can be found in the Academic Administrative Policies and Procedures Manual Links to an external site.. Policies regarding student conduct are handled through the Office of Student Accountability and Conflict Response in the Office of Student Affairs and can be found at studentaffairs.psu.edu/conduct Links to an external site.. Outside of the required University policies, other required policies adopted by departments, and guidelines of the College or a department, instructors may establish class policies appropriate to their course and teaching styles.

Required Syllabus Policies

Penn State Policy 43-00 Links to an external site. describes the syllabus: “A written (paper or electronic form) syllabus must be distributed to students in each course on or before the first class meeting. Changes to the syllabus shall also be given to the student in written (paper or electronic) form.” Your syllabus must include the following:

1. Course content and expectations
2. Course goals and objectives
3. Contact information for all course instructors
4. Course examination policy
5. Course instructions for a campus closure
6. Location of the program (i.e., class meeting times and location)
7. Grade breakdown by assessment type and percentage
8. Required course materials
9. Academic integrity policy
10. Information on procedures related to adjustments identified by Student Disability Resources
11. Information on reporting educational equity concerns through the Report Bias site
12. Information on available Counseling and Psychological Services

Note that it is not adequate to announce changes in class. Changes must be communicated in writing (an email or posted announcement to students, for example).

The final four items (#9-#12) are areas where the University has specific expectations or recommendations regarding the content, which can be found here: senate.psu.edu/instructors/syllabus-statement-examples Links to an external site.. The others leave more to the discretion of the instructors and departments.

The Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence provides excellent resources on writing a syllabus Links to an external site. covering these and other areas. Many instructors use the syllabus checklist Links to an external site.. No matter what University, department or other resources you consult, clarity and consistency in your syllabus on content, expectations, exam and assignment policies, and grades and evaluation will prevent problems and save time.

Exam Policy

Faculty Senate Policy 44-00 Links to an external site. covers examination policies and instructors are expected to follow the policy.

• Instructors are not permitted to schedule examinations (or any other assignment worth 11% or more of the final grade) during the last week of classes.
• Any end-of-semester examinations worth more than ten percent of the course grade must be scheduled during the final examination period.
• Where end-of-semester examinations are not administered and an alternative integrative and evaluational means worth more than ten percent of the course grade is used (e.g., term paper, final project report, take-home examinations, or studio projects) the due date for the assignment can be no earlier than the first day of the final examination period.

Exceptions to the provisions of this policy may be granted only for educational reasons and only as recommended by the faculty of the program offering the course and approved by the appropriate dean or chancellor.

During the semester evening examinations may be used as long as the following conditions are fulfilled:

• Consent of the dean of the college in which the course is taught is obtained.
• Not more than four such examinations are scheduled in any one semester in any course.
• The evening examinations are scheduled by your department scheduler in advance with the University Registrar at University Park or the academic affairs officer at other locations and announced to the students during the first week of the semester.

If you wish to use final or evening exams, contact your program leader or department staff scheduler and request exam scheduling Links to an external site. before the semester starts.

FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act)

FERPA concerns protecting the privacy of students’ records. All instructors are required to have completed the FERPA tutorial and passed a FERPA quiz to access certain student information. Any graduate teaching assistants or anyone paid for grading or similar duties should also be required to complete FERPA training. Instructions on the tutorial and exam can be found at this site: registrar.psu.edu/staff/ferpa_tutorial/ferpa_tutorial.cfm Links to an external site.. Links to an external site. The Registrar’s site contains outstanding guidance Links to an external site. for faculty. Instructors cannot discuss any aspect of a student’s “educational record” with anyone without the student’s written permission, with the only exception being another University employee who has a legitimate educational reason to need to know the information. A form for students Links to an external site. to complete if they want to give you permission to discuss information with parents or others can be used. A note about the receipt of this form should be made in Starfish advising notes, and a copy of the form should be emailed to the Associate Dean (dgs4@psu.edu) or sent to the Office of Undergraduate Education, 104 Henderson Building.

One important area where this policy can also apply is student requests for letters of recommendation Links to an external site.. Another important area where FERPA can come into play is with courseware, as some products require sharing information about students. Penn State has created a new site that identifies all courseware that is approved for use, and provides a means for instructors to nominate courseware to receive a review and be integrated into Canvas to protect privacy. Visit the Courseware Links to an external site. site for more info.

Attendance and Make-up Opportunities

The official University policy and procedure concerning attendance and make-up assignments can be found at undergrad.psu.edu/aappm/E-11-class-attendance Links to an external site.. While attendance is not a required item in syllabus, if you will use it for evaluation, you must clearly communicate your policy as part of the required “basis for grades” section. It is strongly recommended that you include an explicit statement of your policies regarding attendance, notification of absences, and make-up policy in the syllabus. According to University Policy 42-27 on Class Attendance Links to an external site. “…it is the policy of the University that class attendance is expected and that students should follow the attendance policy of the instructor, as outlined in the syllabus. A student should attend every scheduled class and should be held responsible for all work covered in the courses taken.”

When a student absence results in a missed evaluative event, the policy provides two circumstances under which instructors should provide, within reason, opportunity to make up work for students who miss class:

1. “…regularly scheduled, University-approved curricular and extracurricular activities (such as Martin Luther King Day of Service, field trips, debate trips, choir trips, and athletic contests).
2. “…other legitimate but unavoidable reasons, such as illness, injury, military service, family emergency, religious observance” or “…post-graduate, career-related interviews when there is no opportunity for students to re-schedule these opportunities (such as employment and graduate school final interviews.)” or “…election day due to participation in local, state, and federal governmental elections…”. (This useful resource provides a calendar of Religious Holidays for instructors to consult: interfaith-calendar.org/index Links to an external site.)

In both cases, if an evaluative event will be missed, students can be required to present a class absence form Links to an external site. or provide other appropriate written notification of the reason for the absence to the instructors member in a timely way and prior to the event, if at all possible. If communicated in their policy, an instructor can consider the lack of timely notification as a reason to deny the student an opportunity to make-up an evaluative event. In most cases, instructors may require students to provide documentation regarding a missed evaluative event to verify that a student's absence is in accordance with Senate Policy 42-27, but should be sensitive to a student's privacy and well-being. Students are not required to provide any information that would reveal private health information or to provide a document containing the signature of a clinician and University Health Services (UHS) does not provide verification of illness or injuries, except for extended absences related to serious conditions. Students can be held responsible for misrepresenting the reasons for a missed class or evaluative event. Requests for missing class or an evaluative event based on false claims may be considered violations of academic integrity.

If a student has presented appropriate documentation in a timely manner, students should be provided with a reasonable opportunity to make up missed work. The make-up opportunity may occur before or after the scheduled evaluative event. Instructors should provide the student with a make-up opportunity that ensures the promotion of learning. The student is permitted to make up the work without penalty. By providing evaluation similar to that given to other students, instructors do not penalize the student who has a legitimate reason for being absent. Proctored make-up exams or exams for students requiring accommodations can be arranged through your department. If a local department option is not available, faculty should contact Heather Zimmerman (104 Henderson Building, 814-865-1427, hdh3@psu.edu) to make arrangements for a proctored make-up exam.

Course Prerequisites and Course Enrollment

HHD courses have automatic prerequisite checking at the time of course registration. Students can request an override for a missing prerequisite from the HHD department offering the course. Instructors do have the authority to decide whether individual students without prerequisites may take the course they are teaching. Students sometimes request that an instructor add them to the Canvas course when they are not officially enrolled. Instructors should be aware that this is a FERPA violation. Students must be enrolled through LionPath to gain access to the Canvas course, and instructors should not add students to their course roster independent of that registration.

University policy provides specific course enrollment criteria (undergrad.psu.edu/aappm/C-3-minimum-course-enrollment-threshold-expectations Links to an external site.). Courses numbered from 001-399 must have 15 or more students, 400-level courses must have 8 or more students, and 500+ level courses must have 5 or more students. The College reviews lists of underenrolled sections to identify areas where class sections need to be added or dropped. Instructors teaching underenrolled classes may need to discuss alternative workload assignments with the Department Head.

Required Textbook Policy

The 2008 Higher Education Opportunity Act requires Penn State faculty to make textbook information available to students, including the author, ISBN, and price. The law requires information to be online when students register for courses. Penn State Policy R-1 Links to an external site. addresses this law. Instructors must provide textbook information to department staff or submit that information themselves so that the University can comply with the law, even if that information is that no textbook is required or that the textbook information will be determined later. Faculty can log in to submit your textbook adoption here: aip.bncollege.com/app Links to an external site.

The following deadlines apply:

• September 1 is the textbook submission deadline for the Spring courses.
• February 1 is the textbook submission deadline for Summer courses.
• March 1 is the textbook submission deadline for Fall courses.

Exceptions apply for late added courses and instructors, but timely information must be available to students.

Student Progress Reporting

Penn State's Progress Reporting Links to an external site. system enables instructors to alert undergraduate students and their academic advisers to academic performance problems throughout the semester. There are 2 specific periods when faculty are asked to report on student progress, the Early Progress Report and the Mid-semester Progress Report. Instructors are notified by email and directed to enter progress reports in the academic advising system called Starfish Links to an external site.. This website has guidance for advisers, instructors and students about the system. Instructors are encouraged to complete Progress Reports for ALL STUDENTS, as this gives advisers complete information on student successes and challenges. In addition to the two progress reporting campaigns, instructors can always alert advisers and others to a concern Links to an external site. about a student through Starfish. The earlier a concern is alerted, the better. Instructors should manually raise a flag for advisers and students when there is poor performance on any major assignment.

Federal regulations regarding financial aid now require universities to be able to document a student's "last date of academically-related activity". When assigning a failing grade at the end of the semester, instructors are required to indicate whether the student participated for the entire semester, participated for a partial semester, or never participated. When indicating that a student completed only a 'partial semester,' instructors must provide the last recorded date of the student's academic attendance or attendance at an academically-related activity. The student's attendance must include "academic engagement" as defined by the policy Links to an external site.. Instructors must retain documentation that supports the date they report as a student's last academically-related activity. Instructors are strongly encouraged to use the grade reporting and other course management functions in Canvas. Instructors who record and document grades and academically-related activities outside of Canvas must retain their records for no less than 5 years.

Student Contact Hours

Penn State and the College of Health and Human Development do not have a policy on student contact hours (aka, “office hours”), but each instructor should establish some regular hours for student meetings outside of class. Local departments may have expectations for faculty on this. The amount of time will depend on the number of courses and students taught. Penn State faculty have developed some guidance and suggestions for effective meetings outside of class with students: Office Hours guidance Links to an external site..

Evaluation of Teaching

Courses are evaluated by online Student Ratings of Teacher Effectiveness Links to an external site.. At the end of each semester, your SRTEs are available for you, your program director, and your Department Head to review. If you have questions about SRTEs, go to this site: srte.psu.edu/FAQ Links to an external site.. The Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence has some excellent suggestions for how you can improve response rate by students to ensure that you get high quality feedback. See the "Faculty strategies for encouraging their students to fill out the SRTEs Links to an external site.". Many instructors also use a mid-semester assessment to allow for “mid-course” modifications (which should be provided to students in writing). The College of HHD strongly encourages the use of such mid-semester assessments. The Schreyer Institute has an excellent set of suggestions about mid-semester evaluation Links to an external site.. Teaching may also be evaluated through peer observation and feedback. Individual departments have policies regarding how this is done.

Undergraduate Learning Assistants: More and more instructors are involving undergraduates as teaching supports, learning assistants, discussion leaders and in other ways. To distinguish undergraduates involved in these experiences from graduate teaching assistants, the College encourages the use of a term other than “TA” (e.g., peer mentor, undergraduate learning assistant). Peer mentoring and learning offers a great learning opportunity for some students, and research supports the conclusion that this teaching practice enhances student learning. Penn State and the College of Health and Human Development do not have policies regarding the use of undergraduates in these roles. Some departments and other universities have developed explicit guidelines that may be helpful. Without endorsing the full manual, for example, Duke University provides the following: trinity.duke.edu/undergraduate/academic-policies/undergrad-teaching-assistants Links to an external site.. Faculty who plan to use undergraduate learning assistants may want to sign up with the Learning Assistants Alliance Links to an external site..

There are a few areas that deserve explicit notice. First, provide students with training for their role. Many departments provide some explicit guidance for the graduate assistants newly assuming a teaching role, and instructors and departments using undergraduate assistants should consider using similar programs and resources to guide undergraduates. Second, peer conflicts of interest can create problems. Review the course roster with undergraduate assistants, identify any potential conflicts of interest, and plan ahead to prevent an undergraduate assistant from being placed in situations that present an ethical challenge. Third, giving undergraduate assistants access to the official grade book in Canvas or discussing or giving them access to students’ grades on assignments may result in FERPA violations. Instructors should carefully consider whether their use in grading is appropriate.

Campus Closure

In the event of a campus closure, all University activities are cancelled for the time period specified in the closure. When a campus closes, instructors may not move a cancelled residential instruction class meeting to a synchronous online meeting, However, instructors may provide asynchronous online instruction to make up for the cancelled class as long as students are given a reasonable time after the closure to complete it.

If the closure causes an in-class exam to be rescheduled, the instructors will administer the exam no sooner than the next regularly scheduled class period. If the exam is taking place outside of class, students will be given a reasonable and timely notice to reschedule the exam. In the case of an exam administered through an online learning management system on the day of the closure, instructors will communicate an opportunity to make up the exam to students who are unable to take it that day. The same considerations will be given to previously announced assessments and/or assignments with submission deadlines on the day of a closure.

Curriculum and Course Proposals

Faculty interested in developing new courses or programs (certificates, minors, majors) or revising existing ones typically begin that process through consultation in their academic department. After discussion within the department, faculty can submit course proposals through the Curriculum Information Managment Links to an external site. (CIM) system. Program proposals need to be initiated through the Office of the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs or the Office of the Associate Dean for Graduate Programs. Guidance on how to submit proposals is found on CIM. Submitted proposals are first reviewed by the College Curricular Affairs Committee, and each department has a representative on that committee who can also assist and guide faculty submitting proposals.

Experimental (x97 or x98) courses are courses which will be offered once or twice as special topics courses. Special topics courses on the same material can only be offered twice before they must be moved to permanent course status with a course proposal. Faculty can also offer students research experiences (using courses numbered x94) and independent study (using courses numbered x96).