The vibrancy of the College as an intellectual and social community depends upon in-person teaching and learning. Students and faculty alike benefit from Indiana University Bloomington's strength as a residential campus where intellectual collaboration and exploration unfold in real time through personal interactions, and where facilities such as libraries, labs, and well-equipped instructional and performance spaces support hands-on learning. At the same time, remote instructional modalities, including hybrid courses that combine face-to-face and remote instruction, provide important opportunities to increase access to the College's unique offerings, and to involve an increasingly diverse community of learners in its educational mission.
Departments should thoughtfully plan their approach to remote instruction, as one category within a range of instructional modalities, keeping these distinctive benefits in mind. To protect the predominantly residential character of learning within the College, and to maintain an optimal balance of instructional modalities across the College as a whole, implementation of remote instruction as a teaching modality is subject to the following principles and requirements.
- Each department or program should maintain a written plan outlining the character remote instruction plays in their curriculum, providing a rationale for the types and proportion of courses taught remotely, and justifying in terms of pedagogical appropriateness the use of remote instruction as an instructional modality. The plan must be submitted to the Executive Dean's Office for initial approval and subsequently kept up to date. The plan shall be subject to periodic review by the Executive Dean or their designee.
- Faculty interested in teaching remotely are expected to seek approval via the processes articulated/stipulated by the faculty member's department in accordance with their department's remote instruction plan. Proposals to teach remotely that are approved by departments are still subject to review by the Executive Dean or their designee.
- Faculty who receive approval to employ remote instructional modalities are still expected to be present in Bloomington and available to meet all service commitments, except in cases where the Executive Dean or
their designee explicitly approves an exception to this general expectation. - Even when such exceptions are granted, faculty not in residence in Bloomington are still expected to participate as fully as possible in the academic life of their departments or programs.
- Hybrid courses combine regularly occurring face-to-face and remote elements and are thus distinct from fully remote courses. Departments should include their rationale and principles governing the use of hybrid instruction in their remote instruction plan. Instructors who wish to teach in a hybrid format should coordinate with their department.
NOTE: This policy supersedes and replaces the previous Policy for Online Teaching (2016)