Course Design

Initial Student Engagement

All credit-bearing university courses are to include a required assignment submission, quiz submission, or discussion post in My Courses, the university’s LMS, by 11:59 PM the first Wednesday of each term. Instructors will also ensure this activity is available on the first day of the course. Surveys, self-assessments, checklists, or other activities in My Courses do not meet the requirement. The university requires courses delivered in all modalities to include the submission requirement.
 
This requirement enables the university to meet U.S. Department of Education requirements to verify course engagement. Utilization of the LMS in this process enables instructors and advisors to monitor initial course engagement by each student. Advisors will be in contact with students who do not complete the initial requirement. Faculty should also follow up with students who do not submit as in the normal practice.

This requirement helps advisors encourage students to participate in courses they intend to stay in and withdraw from the ones they do not. It also helps minimize back-and-forth communication between instructors and advisors. Beyond the academic implications, engagement decisions made by students early in the term have substantive financial implications.
 
While the requirement may be low-stakes, it does not need to be "extra" on the part of instructors and students. It should not be labeled as a "Student Engagement Requirement." For example, if the course requires discussion boards, make the first post of the Week 1 Discussion due by 11:59 PM the first Wednesday of the course. Another way is to make a syllabus quiz or quiz acknowledging course policies due by the Wednesday deadline. Students could also submit a practice assignment or take a sample quiz with fun icebreaker questions to help familiarize themselves with My Courses.

The Curriculum and Instruction Center supports this policy with examples and other resources for both CSP and CSP Global courses:

• Example Assignments, Quizzes, and Discussion Prompts

• Creating Discussions

• How to Edit a Discussion Forum and Topic

• How to Edit a Quiz

Questions on LMS implementation? Please reach out to cic@csp.edu.

Benefits of Rubrics

• Rubrics provide students with clearly articulated grading standards and expectations, which allows them to identify what is expected of them in order to achieve their desired outcome. In addition, students are presented with the opportunity to use rubrics to self-assess their own work and review for improvements.
• Rubrics act as a guide for helping instructors create a consistent grading experience in their courses with opportunities for informative and focused feedback. Instructors may also use rubrics as an evaluation tool when reviewing a course or assessment for effectiveness or success in objectives.

Benefits of Rubrics Tool in My Courses

Using the Rubrics tool in My Courses transforms rubrics from a static reference into an interactive assessment instrument. It saves time, standardizes grading, provides actionable data for continuous improvement, and helps get students real-time, transparent feedback.

Other Benefits:

• Students must look at the rubric before submitting
• Fully screen-reader accessible and mobile-friendly
• Use rubrics to grade and automatically total scores
• When used to grade, rubrics feed directly into assessment data and reports
• Need to be used with assignments and discussions associated with the outcomes tool

Types of Rubrics in My Courses

The Office of Academic Affairs has launched a campus-wide initiative supported by the Curriculum & Instruction Center (CIC) to strengthen assessment and curriculum alignment. As part of this project, academic programs will map their program outcomes, course outcomes, and associated assessments using a standardized spreadsheet.

CIC will use these spreadsheets to build the corresponding outcomes structure in My Courses and align outcomes to the designated assignments, quizzes, and discussions. When instructors grade using the rubrics tool, any aligned outcomes will be automatically assessed.

The data generated from these aligned assessments will provide programs with actionable insights to support continuous improvement, identify strengths and gaps within the curriculum, and inform future curricular and instructional decisions.