1.1 Quiz: The What and Why of RSI

What is Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI)?

Simply put, RSI is a mandate from the Department of Education stating that faculty teaching fully-online classes must interact in some meaningful instructional way with their students on a regular basis in order to count as distance education (and be eligible for federal financial aid).  In the law, they differentiate between distance education and correspondence courses:

Source: 
a Section 103(7) of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended.
b 34 CFR 600.2

Interpretations of RSI regulations commonly consist of four parts:

1. Interaction must be initiated by the instructor.  It is not sufficient for the instructor to be "available".  Rather, instructors must interact with students proactively.
2. Interaction must be "regular" and reasonably frequent.  
3. Interaction must be of a "substantive" academic nature.
4. Interaction must be with an instructor that meets the standards of the institution's accrediting agency.  The instructor cannot outsource the interaction to someone who is not recognized as qualified to teach the course.

Why RSI?

Interestingly, these laws were born from a problem that predated online courses.  As early as the mid-1800's, students could enroll in correspondence schools, where students and teachers would communicate by mail, originally delivered through the Pony Express!... just a little different from online courses today.  These courses often lacked regulation or rigor (at times they were downright fraudulent) and in 1992, an investigation by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that students were twice as likely to default on student loans from correspondence courses when compared to colleges and universities.  But, it wasn't until 2006 that this law attempted to legitimize and differentiate online courses provided by colleges from your run-of-the-diploma-mill correspondence courses.

While the original intent of the law was to reduce wasteful government spending by reducing the amount of defaulted federal loans and preventing abuse by fraudulent institutions, today’s RSI regulation maintains broad support for several reasons.  For starters, they remove incentives to create predatory online diploma mills, which protects students.  They also prevent legitimate educational institutions from charging online students full tuition fees for an online "course" which amounts to not much more than an online textbook.  In essence, RSI regulations codify best practices, ensuring that student tuition fees include a guarantee that the student receives regular interaction with an expert faculty member just as they would in a face-to-face course. 

What happens if I'm not in compliance?

In the past, the Department of Education has ruled that courses that did not meet the criterion for RSI were not eligible for federal financial aid.  As a result, those colleges had to pay back the federal financial aid awarded (to the tune of millions of dollars) for all students enrolled in those courses, with the threat of being barred from receiving future federal aid.  Needless to say, this has serious implications for the welfare of our college and our students.

Of course, more importantly, if you aren't in compliance, your courses are missing an important element that has a profound effect on student success and satisfaction.  Your expert feedback (beyond just grading assignments) provides important guidance for your students' growth.  

Quiz: Understanding RSI

Test your knowledge of RSI by taking this short quiz. 

You have two attempts for this quiz.