Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI)

Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI) sets the minimum expectations for how an instructor should engage with their students throughout a course.

To ensure faculty meet Western’s requirements for proposing an online course, they should consult:

The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) sets the parameters for ensuring that distance education meets the following requirements (34 CFR § 600.2):

Substantive Interaction (SI)

Opportunity for students to meaningfully engage with the course instructor. A minimum of two of the following must be met for an online course to be considered to have Substantive Interaction:

“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”

(34 CFR § 600.2)

“Providing direct instruction;”
Synchronous lectures and/or sessions with opportunities for student interaction.
“Assessing or providing feedback on a student’s coursework;”
Instructor review and assessment of student work, including feedback.
“Providing information or responding to questions about the content of a course or competency;”
Opportunity for students to ask questions at the course level and at the module level on a regular basis (see RI-i)
“Facilitating a group discussion regarding the content of a course or competency; or”
Instructor-led group discussions in various formats.
“Other instructional activities approved by the institution’s or program’s accrediting agency.”
Institutional and discipline-specific instructional activities.

Regular Interaction (RI)

Opportunities for students to meaningfully engage with the course instructor are predictable and done so on a regular basis. Both of the following must be met for an online course to be considered to have Regular Interaction:

“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”
(34 CFR § 600.2)

“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”
Regular opportunities are made available for students to engage with the instructor. Examples may include: regularly scheduled class meetings with interaction (synchronous and mixed modality) (SI-i and SI-iii), feedback on assessment (SI-ii), discussion forums (SI-iv), or other instructional activities (SI-v).
“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.”
Instructor targeted and specific review and assessment of student work on a regular, timely basis.

Other RSI Definitions and Resources

Common Course Activities and RSI Examples

Discussions

Online discussions are an asynchronous strategy to allow students to use text, audio, or video-based submissions in a Canvas discussion forum. Typically, these are designed to facilitate conversation between peers and in many cases, the instructor will participate to some degree to help guide conversation or offer input or feedback related to the content. This can take many formats, including: small group or whole-class discussions.

Meets RSI: Faculty contributes regular commentary and facilitation in the discussion forum responses related to the course content or gives students individual feedback using the assignment comments.

Does not meet RSI: Students are the only participants in the discussion posts and no faculty involvement or feedback is given.

Research Paper or Writing Assignment

Writing and research papers are given in many disciplines as either solo or group assignments. Asynchronous courses can make use of the Canvas Assignment feature to facilitate digital uploads of writing assignments in an online environment. These are often important for students to demonstrate either their writing skills or their content knowledge and ability to connect or apply concepts or research, however, they do not always incorporate intentional RSI.

Meets RSI: Faculty provides feedback within a timely manner to students following their assignment submission. Further RSI may be leveraged by providing consultations and/or feedback during the draft writing process, prior to the final assignment submission.

Does not meet RSI: Students turn in an assignment with no feedback or significantly delayed feedback.

Peer Review Activity

Oftentimes, to help students identify areas of improvement in their peers’ work and to benefit from seeing other examples of this type of activity, peer review assignments are given. This involves a draft of some sort of project (written work, presentation, or other deliverable) being submitted between peers and they are asked to review one another’s work to apply feedback. Student feedback to one another does not qualify as RSI.

Test, Quiz, or Exam

Formative and summative assessments using the form of tests, quizzes or exams can be either low or high stakes. Depending on the nature of the course outcomes, you may decide to implement one or all of these assignments. As with the other examples on this site, not all assessments incorporate RSI. It is important to determine when and how you will provide students with feedback on these types of assessments.

Meets RSI: Faculty initiates and provides feedback about student work.

Does not meet RSI: Assignment consists of students taking text/quiz/exam and submitting it for a grade with no feedback about their results from the instructor (includes auto-graded submissions in Canvas, from textbook publishers, etc.).

Group Projects/Activities

Group projects can be incredibly meaningful in online courses as a way for students to build community as well as opportunities for instructors to provide scaffolding through consultations, meetings, and working sessions, in addition to their assignment feedback related to the assignment.

Meets RSI: Faculty facilitates and/or provides opportunities for meetings with student groups while they participate in the assignment building process, instructor gives direct feedback on draft or final submissions.

Does not meet RSI: Students work together and submit activity with no instructor interaction.

Course Readings

Student reading of course materials is a common activity, however, it is not typically representative of RSI due to its independent nature.

Meets RSI: Faculty facilitates the reading during synchronous class sessions and provides guidance, students read and discuss in small groups and faculty facilitates class discussion around the reading. For language classes, reading out loud in class with faculty providing pronunciation feedback in real-time.

Does not meet RSI: Students read independently without faculty interaction.