Course Connect - For Faculty & Staff: Policies

College Policies on Course Connect

The use of Course Connect for all courses is required. According to college policy, all relevant course materials should be archived on the Course Connect site, including the following:

• Syllabus
• Learning objectives (can be included in syllabus)
• Schedule of assignments (can be included in syllabus)
• Grading plan and policies, including specific details about how grades will be communicated to students (e.g. Course Connect grade book, or other means)
• Contact information for instructor (can be included in syllabus)
• Plan for emergency remote instruction for each course either as a section of the syllabus or as a supplemental document. This plan should include:
  • plan and platform for communicating with students
  • plan and platform(s) for continued instruction of course content (assignments, video lessons, synchronous meetings, etc.)

Course Closure Policies

All courses will be archived two weeks after grades are due each semester. Our course closure policy is designed to help protect all users and maintain academic integrity across campus. Our current policy of closing courses two weeks past the end of the semester is designed based on the policies of similar institutions. We have three main motivations behind closing courses, namely:

1. To align Course Connect policies with wider institutional policies;
2. To prevent any kind of accidental copyright infringement; and
3. To prevent student access to courses (specifically, their ability to submit to assignments) past the end of the semester.

Under fair use, professors are protected and able to use some copyrighted materials for educational purposes. However, when the course is no longer being taught these protections disappear, as the materials have to be limited to students formally enrolled in the course by the college. Additionally, closing courses allows us to prevent students from submitting work to assignments from previous semesters either purposely or by accident, and helps to greatly reduce confusion about course access amongst students.

For more information, please see the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA). Additionally, the US Copyright Office has an excellent memorandum on copyright in digital education found here. Marqueete University also lays out the laws as they apply to online courses in a very accessible manner here.

Exceptions for Incomplete Grades

Beginning at at the end of the Fall 2024 semester, courses in which a student has received an ‘incomplete’ grade may remain open past the typical course closure date. According to college policy students are allowed one month after the end of the semester (30 days after the last day of final exams) to complete their course work. To accommodate students with incomplete grades, as well as to allow the instructor time to grade completed student work, courses with an incomplete grade may remain open for a total of 30 days plus 3 business days past the end of the semester. After this period, the course will be closed in accordance with existing Course Connect and college-wide policies. Instructors are responsible for notifying the Instructional Technology Librarian of courses that should remain open past the typical course closure date for students to complete coursework.