Online/Remote Course Access

Institutions rapidly shifted to online platforms in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This effort reflected a desire to continue instruction during the emergency, even in a diminished capacity. It is now natural that many students, faculty, and staff are grappling with how to equitably apply those lessons when faced with individual student absence due to personal circumstances.

Online courses and face-to-face courses each have distinct features, objectives, and learning pedagogies. As a matter of University policy, faculty teaching face to face courses are not expected to also have equivalent online content readily available. The University is also unlikely to compel an instructor to produce and deliver entirely new online content as an individual accommodation for a student.

The accommodations that the University will consider for qualified students include:

1. Remote access to the face-to-face course, primarily through a Zoom link to live instruction to avoid absence. The goal of any consideration is to determine if it is feasible to establish a remote experience equivalent to the face-to-face format.
2. Make-up opportunities, deadline exceptions, alternate activities, and similar flexibility to manage absence.

To arrive at the above accommodations, DRC staff will engage with students and faculty in the standard accommodation determination, which seeks to address two elements.

Is the requested accommodation necessary?

The DRC engages with students and assesses documentation to ensure there is a rationale link between the person’s condition and the requested accommodation. This generally involves meeting(s) and documentation from a health-care provider that thoroughly describes the condition’s functional impacts. If questions about necessity cannot be resolved, the DRC might offer an alternate accommodation or direct the student to submit additional clarifying information.

For remote access requests, we ask that care providers write a letter addressing the questions on this form: Online/Remote Access Documentation.

Is the requested accommodation reasonable?

In the case of remote access, the DRC will work with faculty and academic departments on an individual student, course-by-course basis to determine if remote access is reasonable given the nature of the course. Regulatory guidance and case law gives broad deference to an institution’s judgement, assuming they engage in an individualized consideration and base a denial on at least one of following factors:

• a fundamental alteration, meaning that the requested accommodation would negate a preponderance of the intended learning outcomes and/or prevent an instructor from assessing the student’s achievement of the outcomes
• undue administrative burden, meaning a functional barrier exists to the design and implementation of the accommodation. As a general rule, potential financial cost is rarely considered an undue administrative burden. The timeliness of a request might be considered an administrative burden, depending upon the classroom, equipment, and technology available

The following chart demonstrates how the DRC will work with instructors and academic departments to analyze whether remote access for a face-to-face course is reasonable. This analysis leans heavily upon the judgment of the instructor but also provides a framework to document and articulate a determination to a student. This is not intended to be limiting; an instructor has latitude to use their best judgment to provide flexibilities that might go “above and beyond” what is articulated here.

Instances of short-term absence/illness may not rise to the level of remote access necessity. Make-up of missed activities, access to PowerPoints, or other short-term accommodations may be implemented.

Students will be advised to discuss other flexibilities with their academic department if remote access cannot be established. This could include incompletes, substituting existing online coursework for the face-to-face course(s), taking the face-to-face course(s) later, or transfer of coursework from different institutions.

Course drops and tuition refund appeal are also options if accommodations cannot be made for the student to persist in the course.