ED OPE Webinar

**Department of Education,**

**Office of Postsecondary Education**

**Webinar**

**DISCLAIMER:**

**Note: The following is the output of transcribing from a recording. Although the**

**transcription is largely accurate; in some cases, it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible**

**passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the**

**meeting, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.**

WEBVTT                                                                        

Good morning or good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the second of three webinars presented by the office of Postsecondary Education. These webinars will provide an overview of the changes to the regulatory requirements on the topic of distance education and innovation which was published on September the 2nd, 2020, and have an effective date of July, the 1st, 2021. Each webinar will address a separate set of topics from these regulations.

Today’s webinar will address distance education and institutional eligibility. This session is being recorded and the recording and the transcript of this session will be announced in a future communication on FSApartners.ed.gov. Meanwhile, you can access today's PowerPoint presentation by going to the link provided on your screen. Today's webinar will be in listen only mode. You will be able to ask questions through the Q& A feature by clicking on the Q& A icon at the top right corner of your webinar’s screen. As time permits, we will conclude the webinar with a Q A session. Today's webinar will be presented by David Musser of Federal Student Aid, and Greg Martin of the Office of Postsecondary Education I would now turn it over to Dave Thanks Benedict, then. 

Thanks to everyone who's joining us today. This webinar is a continuation from our most recent presentation on satisfactory academic progress and return of Title IV funds on April 16th. Today will cover the same topics... Today will cover topics from the same set of regulations, but this time focus on those relating to distance education and institutional eligibility. In two weeks, we will offer a final presentation describing a new type of academic calendar for subscription-based programs introduced in these regulations.

Many of the regulations will discuss today, such as the definitions of clock hour, an academic year are what we call foundational to the administration of federal student aid. Some of the other rules that we will discuss are no less important but apply primarily to institutional or program eligibility issues that your financial aid office may not have as much interaction with.  This means you may need to work with other offices or staff at your institution such as the Business Office, Provost, Registrar, admissions, communications, or your president’s office.  That's not an exhaustive list, so you might want to think about what other offices some of which may be unique to your institution, that you'll need to work with. Other groups that you may partner with when considering how to implement these changes may include your accrediting agency, state agencies, or your third-party servicers or software vendors. 

So, here are our two presenters for today. I'll be starting us off. My name is David Musser and I'm the director of the Policy, Innovation and Dissemination Group at the Office of Federal Student Aid, and I'm joined by Greg Martin, director of the Policy Development Group in the Office of Postsecondary Education. We've got a lot to cover in this presentation, but I'd like to take just a moment to walk through the agenda with you before we get started. We'll start with an introduction to the regulations and a little bit of background about distance education. Then, we'll move into distance education and the new definitions that are associated with it. Then, we'll talk about institution and program eligibility changes, limitations on program length written arrangements, and then discuss the updates to e-clock to credit conversion calculation, all of which are part of the September 2020 regulations, and then we'll offer you some references that you can use when you're looking at these issues in the future. 

So, a bit of introduction before we get started. So, these regulations were part of a negotiated rulemaking process that began in 2018 and culminated with the publication of a notice of Proposed Rulemaking on April 2nd, 2020. Following a public comment period, the Department published final regulations on September 2nd, 2020, which will become effective for all institutions on July 1st, 2021. Note the bullet at the bottom of the slide: though the regulations will go into effect for all institutions on July 1st this summer, institutions have the option of early implementing some or all of the regulations at their discretion. So, if you decide to early implement any of these provisions, it's a good practice to clearly document your institutions decision and the date you make it, including a statement signed by someone at your institution with the authority to make those kinds of decisions. The department does not have specific rules about how to document your decision to implement regulations early.

Alright, so let's start off with the new definitions and changes to requirements for distance education. I'll walk through that part and after that I'll hand off the presentation to Greg who will take you through the other institutional eligibility requirements in these regulations. So, let's start off with a bit of background about distance education and why it's an important concept in the department's regulations. So, when the technology to offer instruction online first    became available, the only way to offer such coursework for Title IV purposes was by treating it like correspondence courses, but those courses are associated with numerous limitations. For example, cost of attendance for students enrolled in correspondence courses is limited, so only tuition and fees, books, and supplies, travel, and room, and board. Students enrolled in correspondence courses can be no more than half time for Pell Grant purposes, and perhaps most importantly, if a school offers more than 50% of its courses through correspondence, or if more than 50% of its students are enrolled in correspondence courses the institution could lose eligibility for Title IV aid entirely. 

So, in 2006, recognizing that online coursework was becoming an increasingly important part of postsecondary education, Congress decided to distinguish distance education from correspondence courses in order to remove some of those limitations on distance education programs and make them more accessible to students. To do this, Congress created a separate definition of distance education. At that time, it was called telecommunications that emphasize what we call regular and substantive interaction between students and the instructor. One quick note here, the law refers to offering distance education's synchronously or asynchronously, and you'll hear those terms throughout this presentation in various places, including places in the regulations. So, in this context, synchronous essentially means real time instruction, where students and instructors are present in a virtual environment at the same time. Asynchronous means instruction that occurs outside of that same time instructional environment that could include, for example email exchanges between students and instructors regarding course content.                  

Since 2006, instructional technology and new approaches to pedagogy having enabled new methods of teaching and learning in an online environment. In some programs different faculty now perform specialized roles. For example, instruction, responding to questions or assessment, and sometimes they are supported by non-faculty academic staff who do other things: coaching, advising or outreach, and in some cases the multiple faculties share instructional roles.

In addition, we have a lot of new instructional platforms that now allow students to engage with course material at the time and place of their choosing. So, as you can see a lot of things have changed since the original statutory changes for distance education and our regulations were first published. All these changes have led to numerous questions about the definition of distance education, especially what constitutes an instructor, how often is “regular” and what “substantive” means. In that context, the reason regulations attempted to address these questions by amending definitions to specifically address distance education, and some of those definitions are important for a lot of aspects of financial aid, including the clock hour, a week of instructional time, and academic engagement, all of which we will talk about in just a moment. 

But before we dive into the specifics of the regulatory changes there's a bit more background to cover. On January 9th, 2021, the department published an electronic announcement explaining that we had rescinded Dear Colleague Letter Gen 06-17 that Dear Colleague Letter published not long after the law first change to add a definition of distance education, explained that an institution was only required to obtain accrediting agency approval of its offering of distance education if it offered more than half of a program through distance education. 

In the Federal Register Notice on August 13th, 2020, the department rescinded that guidance. This means that any offering of distance education of whatsoever, even a single course, results in the requirement for your institutions accrediting agency to evaluate and approve your institution to offer to distance ed. Remember, unless you're otherwise specified by the creditor, this is an institution-level approval, not a program level approval. Remember also that your accrediting agency needs to be recognized by the department to approve distance education programs for you to meet this requirement. So, keep that guidance in mind for a moment because it's going to be important in light of some of the COVID-19 waivers and flexibilities that we've offered related to distance education. So for payment periods, including March 13th, 2020 through the end of the first payment period beginning after the end of the COVID-19 emergency, the department waived a number of requirements related to distance education, including reporting to the department that the school offers distance education, requiring state authorization in states where the institution enrolls students through distance education but doesn't have a physical location, and accrediting agency approval of distance education. So, all those things are applicable until the first payment period after that begins after the end of the national emergency. And for accreditors, the waivers of their requirements were extended through 180 days following the end of the National emergency. So, remember as of the date of this presentation, the COVID-19 national emergency is not yet over, so all of these flexibilities are still in effect. And we don't know exactly when they will cease, but it will be in the future. 

All of that said, we know that the pandemic has led many institutions to reevaluate their course offerings, and many schools have begun offering distance education for the first time under normal circumstances. That would have meant obtaining accrediting agency approval and then reporting the new offering to the department, but because of those COVID-19 flexibilities, some institutions may not have had obtained those approvals or reported their distance education offerings. So, remember, if you are offering distance ed and you have not obtained accrediting agency approval, your programs offered using distance education...again, one offering, even one course, could lose eligibility for Title IV aid if the waivers end.  And knowing that accrediting agency approval can take some time, we encourage all schools to start seeking those approvals as soon as possible to ensure that you don't experience any interruption in your in your aid eligibility. And remember that when you're ready to report, you will do so using the departments E-APP System Section G, question 31. 

OK, so let's jump into the actual changes in the regulations. The first major change was the addition of the term “academic engagement” in 34 CFR 600.2.  So, for those of you who are familiar with the return of Title IV requirements, this definition probably looks familiar, and we talked about it in our last presentation two weeks ago. It's generally based on the department’s definition of academic attendance and academically related activity in the activity in the R2T4 regulations previously. So, on the slide you can see all the new language in blue text. I won't go through all of that, but I'd like to call your attention to a few important changes to this definition. Note that the definition specifically indicates that academic engagement is defined by the institution in accordance with any of the requirements of its accreditor or state. The definition now refers to attending a synchronous course either in person or online, where there's an opportunity for interaction, it adds assessment to the types of learning activities that qualify, and it refers to a specific interaction, for example through email or by phone with an instructor about academic matters.

So, there's a number of places in the regulations where this term now appears when these regulations are fully implemented. If you remember the return of Title IV funds, regulations previously had definitions for academic attendance that look very similar, but those definitions now refer directly to the academic engagement definition that I just described. Additionally, the updated definition of a clock hour refers to academic engagement, and the updated definition of an academic year in 34 CFR 668.3 also refers to this term, and I'll explain a little bit more about how this term is applied in those regulations 

So, the department also updated the definition of a clock hour to specifically refer to their requirements for clock hours in a distance education environment. Now the original definition of a clock hour was many years old and had not even contemplated distance education when it was first promulgated. So, the regulations specific definitions for distance ed without again the original on-campus requirements. Again, you can see the new language here on the right in blue on the slide, the definition refers to 50 to 60 minutes in a 60-minute period of attendance in either a synchronous or an asynchronous class, and there are different requirements for each type of coursework. So, a clock hour can be earned through attendance in a synchronous class or lecture, where there's an opportunity for direct interaction between the student or the instructor, or it can be earned through academic engagement in an asynchronous learning activity where the student interacts with technology that can monitor and document the amount of time the student participates in the activity. 

Note that here is one place where it's important. Understand that definition of academic engagement that we just discussed, because your asynchronous learning activities need to include academic engagement in order for you to document completed clock hours on the basis of those activities.                  And note the second part of this definition, which is also important: a clock hour and a distance education environment does not count if it doesn't meet all of your accreditor and state requirements or exceeds any of their limitations, including on the number of clock hours that can be offered in a program through distance education. 

So, it's just been really important for you to keep those requirements and limitations in mind. So, some important concepts for clock hours offered through distance education.  Logging in alone never constitutes attending all or part of a clock hour, so if a student logs in, that's fine, and that's always going to be part of their attendance in an online clock hour, but you can't use that alone as a justification to record attendance in a clock hour. Clock hours can be earned synchronously with both instructor and student present or asynchronously where only the student is online and academically engaged. And finally, the school is responsible for demonstrating that students are either present at a virtual class lecture or recitation for an opportunity with interaction, or that they are academically engaged in an asynchronous activity throughout the period that you count as attended and completed as part of the students’ clock hours.

Because this is generally a new concept, we wanted to offer a few examples for what is and isn't acceptable to document that a clock hour has been successfully complete. So first, let's talk about some things that the department does consider to be acceptable. So, in a synchronous setting, the instructor and the students use a webcam process where the instructor monitors and interacts with students during scheduled class time and takes attendance and engages with all students during that session. That's a sort of very traditional form of a class, just in an online environment. Similarly, in an asynchronous environment, the school uses technology that monitors not only when the student logs in, but it captures all activity within an academic portal, demonstrating everything the student is doing within a specific time frame. So, for example, maybe the student is scrolling through reading material working on assignments, completing a quiz, all of those sorts of things. The recurring theme here is that the institution has to have a clear method of monitoring what a student is doing for the period that it records the completion of the clock hour, and that documentation needs to demonstrate that what the student is doing is a form of academic engagement as we just discussed. 

But here are some examples of things that the department would not consider acceptable. Let's say a school awards clock hours based on how long it thinks students will take to complete work. So, let's say that it's looked at how long students have typically taken to complete an assignment, or quiz, and then assigns a certain number of clock hours based on that average time once it sees the student has completed the assignment. That's not acceptable because it's not an indication of what the student was actually doing for that period.  Another example of something that's not acceptable whether synchronous or asynchronous: an instructor just checks in with the student at the beginning of the period and checks back in with them at the end of that period to see what the student has accomplished without actually monitoring what they've been doing. So, in both of these cases, the institution can't demonstrate that the student actually performed the activity in question for the specified period of time. 

In the first case, an estimate is never an acceptable way to record completion of a clock hour, and in the second case just checking in with the student without identifying the activity that they're performing is not sufficient to demonstrate that this student was academically engaged throughout the period recorded.  Remember that it states the institutions responsibility to document that it's complying with this definition and this definition is specifically regarding asynchronous clock hours sets a very high bar for what an institution is expected to be able to record about a student's activities online. So, if you have questions about whether your software platform or your technology is sufficient to do this, we encourage you to reach out to your school participation division for advice about whether it would be compliant with the new requirements.

So, moving on now to a few narrow changes to a definition of correspondence courses. As you can see, the only significant changes here are a reference to multiple instructors rather than a single instructor. I'll explain a little bit more about that when we talk about distance education in a moment, but the other big change here is that we've removed this sentence indicating the correspondence courses are typically self-paced. Though self-pacing is common in correspondence programs, of course, it’s not automatically treated as correspondence if it's self-paced. A course can be self-paced and offered through distance education as long as the institution ensures that the course supports regular and substantive interaction between students and instructors. 

Alright, so here we are...we're going to...we're going to discuss the definition of distance education, which was where the department made some of the biggest changes in the September 2020 regulations. Before we get into that, let's talk about what has not changed.  So, distance education always involves regular and substantive interaction between students and instructors. That applied before and that applies now, and it also applies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, distance education is defined at the course level if the school offers a course where students are separated from the instructor and the school can't demonstrate that it ensures regular and substantive interaction in a course that is a correspondence course.

And finally, the statute is what defines the type of media that distance education may use. So, it has a specific set of different kinds of media, and those are all things that are established clearly in the statute. So as in the other definitions we've discussed, the changes to the previous regulation will appear in blue on the right-hand side of each slide. So, this first change is fairly straightforward, and it's related to the one of the changes that I mentioned in the definition of correspondence course a few moments ago. Whereas the previous definition of distance ed referred to the instructor, this definition refers to instructors and contemplates more than one instructor teaching a single course. The definition of correspondence course made the same change. Now, there's another relatively small change here, whereas the original definition referred to a number of technologies many of which are now a little bit outdated, the department updated that part of the definition to refer instead to other media, but nothing is actually changed about the types of media that are permitted under the statute.

OK, so now we're going into some of the bigger changes to the definition.                  The original definition did not include any explanation for what an instructor was for the purposes of the definition but under the new definition, an instructor is an individual responsible for delivering course content and who meets the qualifications for instruction established by the institution's accrediting agency. This definition clearly puts the power to define the requirements for an instructor in the hands of an institution’s accrediting agency. Remember this definition is about who is considered an instructor, which may or may not be based or synonymous with those who wouldn't be what the accrediting agency considers to be faculty. Those are two different terms, but it's the accreditor, ultimately, that needs to make that determination.

The second major clarification in the new definition is about what constitutes substantive interaction. The definition explains that substantive interaction is engaging students in teaching, learning, and assessment consistent with the content under discussion and includes two of the following: providing direct instruction, assessing or providing feedback on the student’s coursework, providing information, or responding to questions about the content of a course or competency, facilitating a group discussion about the content of a course or competency, or other instructional activities approved by the institution, or program’s accrediting agency. Because there are some cases where a program is programmatically accredited as well as institutionally accredited now that last item would include items that are specifically approved or defined by the accrediting agency and the department does not set any specific limits on what those things might be.

So, now that we've defined what an instructor is and what substantive means what does the definition mean by regular? The new definition clarifies what this means to an institution ensures regular interaction between the student and instructor or instructors by, prior to the student’s completion of a course or competency, 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 and monitoring these students’ academic engagement and success and ensuring that an instructor is responsible for promptly and proactively engaging in substantive interaction with that student when needed, on the basis of such monitoring, or upon request by the student.

As you can see, the definition requires both the opportunity for substantive interaction and monitoring a student’s engagement and success                  So some important concepts to remember about this updated definition of distance ed. First, the department received quite a few questions about how institutions were expected to ensure that at least two types of substantive interaction between students and instructors under this definition were ensured. And recall what I said earlier that we apply the definition of distance ed at the course level, so institutions must engage in at least two forms of some interaction, meeting those regulatory requirements during each course or competency. The regulations don't prescribe a specific frequency or combination of each type of interaction, except that they have to be predictable and scheduled. So, during the comment period for these regulations, we also received a number of comments, questions, and concerns about the level of technological sophistication that was needed for this type of monitoring and in the preamble to the final rule. We explained that this monitoring could be done by a system with monitoring or analytic capabilities. So, for example, you’re learning platform or simply through the instructors and instructors’ monitoring of his or her own students’ engagement and success. And, just as an example, evaluating participation in an asynchronous class environment, carefully examining student activity in the learning platform, or just looking at the quality of the students’ course assignments an instructor can use any of that information in order to evaluate the students’ performance and decide whether they need to reach out to the student and help them out with substantive interaction. 

So, in the preamble to the final rule, the department also laid out some general rules for how it would evaluate institutions’ use of distance education under the new definition, and you see all of these on the screen. First, look at whether the institutions’ online instruction is delivered through an appropriate form of media. We will look at whether the instructors with whom students regularly and substantively interact meet the requirements of the accreditor, and for instruction in the subject matter, we will look at whether instructors engage in at least 2 forms of substantive interaction. Meeting the regulatory requirements for the course or competency we will evaluate whether the institution has established scheduled and predictable opportunities for substantive interaction and that whether it creates expectations for instructors to monitor each student’s engagement and substantively engage with them on the basis of that monitoring. And finally, we'll look at whether instructors are responsive to student’s requests for instructional support, but remember, the requirement is that the institution creates expectations for monitoring student success, so part of that has to be that you ensure that instructors actually follow through with the monitoring itself. We wouldn't consider that institution has actually created a real expectation for careful monitoring if most or all of its instructors are disregarding that requirement. So, it's important to keep a system in place for making sure that instructors really are doing this interaction and monitoring with their students.

Alright, now there were a few more definitions that were updated in the recent regulations, and the next few were unrelated to distance ed. In the September 2020 regulations the department modified the definition of incarcerated student to specifically address students who are incarcerated in juvenile justice facilities. These students are not considered to be incarcerated in a federal or state penal institution, which means that statutory prohibition on receiving Pell Grants does not apply to them, however it's important to note that these students are treated as incarcerated in general, which means, for example, that they're not eligible for direct loan funds. This change incorporated a policy that the department established way back in 2014 in Dear Colleague Letter gen 14-21 so this regulatory update just codifies that policy into this definition                  and as part of codifying that policy we also created a specific definition of juvenile justice facility that you see on this slide. Again, the department's policy has not changed, but it's more clearly stated in the regulations now and you might be wondering how these changes will be affected by the change in the law in the FAFSA Simplification Act which will ultimately remove this statutory prohibition on students receiving Pell grants while they're incarcerated in federal or state penal institutions. Unfortunately, we don't have an answer to that question yet, but the department is currently evaluating how we will treat these students under the new law, and we will publish guides to the community explaining our approach once we've made a final determination.

So, now let's turn back to one more definition that's related to distance education. In this case, the department updated the definition of an academic year to explain how weeks of instructional time recalculated in certain types of distance education programs. Now, it's important to note nothing is changed about the requirements for a week of instruction with reference to a traditional in-person class or a synchronous class offered online. For those types of courses an institution can consider a week to be a week of instruction if it includes at least one day of regularly scheduled instruction, but what wasn't previously clear in the definition was how to count weeks of instruction when the program is offered primarily using asynchronous coursework, and there aren't that many scheduled class sessions. So, you can see the added blue text for romanette ii here, a program offered using asynchronous coursework through distance education or correspondence courses. The institution has to make available the instructional materials, other resources, and instructor support necessary for academic engagement and completion of course objectives. 

So, it's important to note that this part of the definition applies to all types of programs included offered asynchronously including both correspondence and distance education programs. However, if you look at B, you'll note that it applies only to distance education, so it's an additional requirement for those programs, and you can see B here says, in a program using asynchronous coursework through distance ed, the distance institution must expect enrolled students to perform educational activities demonstrating academic engagement during the week. And you can see again, the definition of academic engagement is important here because the school has to ensure that students are actually expected to perform those kinds of activities during each week that you count as a week of instructional time. And finally, you can see under #3 here at the bottom, that the department has specified that instructional time does not include scheduled breaks and activities that are not included in the definition of academic engagement, which I just discussed a few minutes ago. So, this is yet another example of how that academic engagement definition has been incorporated in numerous different parts of the regulations.  

So, there were a few other new definitions that I won't spend a whole lot of time on. Today we updated the definition of a nonprofit institution and just remove some redundant language. We updated the definitions of full-time student and subscription-based program, and those are substantive changes, but we'll talk about those in the session on subscription-based programs in two weeks, we won't talk about them here, and finally we updated the definition of a third-party servicer just to refer to originating loans rather than something certifying loans which was the terminology that we used back in the old FFEL days. 

And the last thing that I'd like to discuss today are some changes to the regulations that were made to 34 CFR 668.111 and those described the requirements for appeals of audit and program review final determinations. Now it's a little bit complicated, but these changes essentially expressed that the department would defer to the accrediting agencies’ judgment with respect to, as you can see on the slide, qualifications for an instructor or instruction, and whether the amount of work associated with the credit hour is consistent with commonly accepted practice in post-secondary education. This will be important when the department is resolving findings related to these concepts in audit or program review determinations and essentially says that we will defer to the accrediting agencies’ judgment about these two items. And with that, I will turn it over to Greg to walk us through some of the other concepts in within the regulations related to institution and program eligibility, Greg.

Thanks Dave. OK again I want to add my welcome to that David to this presentation today. It's a pleasure to be with you. We're going to start with the definition of correspondence students and here we see that under 600.7 an institution is not eligible if more than 50% of the institutions were correspondence courses or 50% or more of the institutions’ regularly enrolled students were enrolled in correspondence. And the regulations clarify what a correspondence student is, and that is, a student whose enrollment for an award year is comprised of at least 50% correspondence courses. You can see here that the regulations going into effect July 1st require the Secretary to make a determination to grant or deny certification within 12 months of the expiration of a current period of participation. This is new obligation of the secretary to take action with a re-certification in a way that hasn't been done before, so you can see here that automatic renewal will result if the secretary does not take action within that 12-month period. However, that automatic renewal may result in a provisional certification depending upon the circumstance, so yes, the secretary is obligated to automatically certify, but we could do it provisionally and not do it for the full four to six-year period. Also updated, the procedures for accepting documentation, and those can now be done electronically which sort of brings us into the 21st century there. Continuing the certification, the department is the entity that is regulated for the new certification requirements, so we don't often do this, but in this case, the department has in a sense regulated itself, so being the regulated entity, we have chosen not to early implement those provisions. As you're aware of, these provisions could all be implemented early at the discretion of the regulated entity. In most cases, in every other case here, that would be you, the institution, but here it is the Department. So, changes to 666.13 that are related to the 12-month timeframe for certification or recertification applicants, applications rather, will be effective for materially complete applications received on or after July 1, 2021.

Next, we'll discuss direct assessment. There are changes to direct assessment, program approval and eligibility that I required that are contained in this September 2nd, 2020, regulations, and these, I think, streamline the process for approval of a direct assessment program and sort of recognize some of what we learned at the beginning stages of that process. Approval is required for the institution’s first direct assessment program, but full application is not required for a second or subsequent direct assessment program at the same credential level, so we're still going to require the full approval for your first one, however, there are different rules now for the second and subsequent direct assessment program and additional direct assessment program at the same credential level and support to keep that in mind that we're talking about a program here that is at the same credential level. So, for example, a baccalaureate degree would not require the department of approve it, but it would have to be reported within 10 days of that change. We will still require approval when the institution offers a direct assessment program at a different level of offering, for example, we talk here about the first direct assessment master’s degree program followed by one offering baccalaureate-level degree, and that would be different than what was originally approved for the direct assess before the initial direct assessment program, and therefore that would require department approval. During the application the institution will be required to explain how it excludes credit earned through prior learning experiences. Some other flexibilities that the September 2nd, 2020, regulations introduce here is it permits preparatory coursework and coursework required by a state for teacher certification to be offered under direct assessment, so it's an additional flexibility that we're allowing here. It also permits programs offered in part through credit or clock hours, and in part through credit hour, equivalencies, or clock hour equivalencies, and it requires an institution to establish a methodology to reasonably equate each module in the direct assessment program to either credit hours or clock hours.

Moving on to discussion of past performance. This would be in the financial responsibility rules, it updated the regulations and 668.174 and applies the term entity or entities to various provisions, and this is in recognition of the fact that ownership can be vested either in an entity or individual. So, what this does is allow the department to more broadly consider ownership structures, one evaluating past performance gives us a little more latitude and recognizes changes that have occurred since the last time those regulations were updated.  Some changes to the requirements for job placement rates, and you can see here we're referencing the program participation agreement and you have the current regulations on the left side, and on the right side of the graphic you see the new regulations and we will just go there to see, but those changes have been, in the case of an institution that advertises job placement rates as a means of attracting students to enroll in the program, the institution will make available to perspective students at or before the time of those students application and most recently available data concerning employment statistics etc. 

We have removed as you can see there, the necessities to include the source of those statistics and any associated timeframes and methodology, and you can see there in romanette ii, relevant state licensing requirements of the state in which the institution is located for any job for which the course of instruction is designed to prepare such perspective students.  So, we made the change there. What does this mean? Institutions are no longer required to specifically disclose the source of statistics, time frames, or the methodology as related to the development of the advertised job placement rates. So, you do need the rates, however, you don't need to have those methodology statistics or time frames. There is no change to the requirement for the institution to make available to prospective students that would be at or before the time those students apply any information needed to substantiate the truthfulness of those rates that you're advertising about jobs or graduation, I should add.

Next, I want to move on to a discussion of program length and some changes that the regulations have made that, these are new regulations, will make there. We do limit the number of hours that a gainful employment program can offer in relation to the number of the hours that are required by the state for that student to be employed in the profession that the program is preparing the student to enter. So, the current regulations would limit the number of hours in a GE program to 150% of the minimum training hours required by the state and that's the state where the school is located, so most states, not all, do have a minimum number of training hours to be in a specific profession. Maybe lists for example, so that's cosmetology, so you would be limited, or maybe massage therapy, you would be limited in program length to 150% of those of whatever that established minimum is now looking at what our new regulations so, they're going to maintain that threshold with one exception, and is when an adjacent state has the minimum requirement for training hours that would exceed 150% of the requirement in the state where the school is located Before moving to this, I do want to say adjacent we mean directly adjacent. So, we have had some, we have had some inquiries about, well, what about if there's...the state is reasonable... is close, but not adjacent so a small part of another state might intervene there. We do mean directly adjacent, so let's take a look at these limitations And you can see the current regulations there described on the left, and then, I'm not going to read those, but what we will look at what changes have been made to 668.14 and you'll see there that the institution must demonstrate a reasonable relationship between the length of the program and entry level requirements for the recognized occupation for which the program is preparing the student. We consider the relationship to be reasonable if the number of clock hours provided in the program again, going back to pretty much what we said in the previous slide, does not exceed the greater of 150% of the minimum number of clock hours that are required for training that recognized occupation which the institution is located, and that is, if the state has established such a requirement or is established by any federal agency or, and now, the flexibility that we've offered in these new regulations, the minimum number of clock hours required for training in the recognized occupation for which the program prepares the student established in a state adjacent to the state in which the institution is located. 

We're going to move on to some examples. Before we do that, I just want to clarify here that we do mean a 150% of the established minimum. The maximum being established minimum in the adjacent state, not 150 of that. So, you can have up to 150% of the state you're in, or if the adjacent state exceeds that, you can have up to that number and this sum, this graphic here, I think, will demonstrate that for you. So here we have a school located in the state of New Jersey offering a massage therapy program and a New Jersey Massage therapy program has a minimum of 500 hours for an individual to receive that massage therapy license. New York State, which is an adjacent state, requires 1000 hours for massage therapy. So, let's take a look at the current regulations, and again, you could early implement these. The maximum hours for massage therapy program in New Jersey are shown there and that is 500. So, they meant the maximum you would be able, or rather the minimum number of hours New Jersey requires for the program is 500. The maximum would be 150% of that number, so that would be the longest program you could offer and that would be 750 hours. And we show that the maximum program length would be 750 hours according to the new regulations, they’re effective July 1, but again could be early implemented. The maximum hours for massage therapy program at a school located in New Jersey now becomes the greater of the minimum number of clock hours, which is 500, 150%, which would be 750 hours or the minimum number of hours in the state of New York, which is the 1000 so you can see here that the maximum program link becomes 1000 hours. You don't want to make the mistake of thinking that the maximum number of hours would be the minimum hours in New York multiplied by 150%. That would not be the case when applying the rule for the adjacent state. So, for the New Jersey school, the maximum number of hours becomes 1000, because that is indeed the minimum for the state of New York. So, the whole idea here would be to allow students who are maybe training in New Jersey, to be in a program that would allow them to be employed in New York, and those are reasonably contiguous area, certainly it's understandable that some students might be moving back and forth, so that allows for that circumstance so a little more flexibility than we've had in the past 

Next, I want to move on to a discussion of written arrangements. And written arrangements you may, I mean, you might refer to those as consortium or contractual agreements. Together they are referred to in the regulations as written arrangements, but I know that in the handbook treatment, in the way they are referred to generally a consortium agreement generally one between two eligible entities, and a contractual agreement between an eligible and ineligible entity. Collectively the form falls under the aegis of written arrangements. So, let's first look at what is not changed with respect to written arrangements. And here you see there, regulatory citation 668.5. Institutions are permitted to enter into written arrangements to allow other institutions or entities to offer the portion of that program. There are no limitations on the amount of a program that can be offered under a written arrangement between two unaffiliated, eligible institutions, so no percentage cap there with respect to what we would call a consortium agreement between two eligible institutions. Written arrangements with ineligible entities cannot permit the ineligible entity to offer more than 25% or 50% without explicit accreditor approval of these eligible programs. And an institution may enter into a written arrangement with institutions in another country, that would be a study abroad subject to the same limitations as arrangements with ineligible entities. So, when you enter into an agreement with an entity in a foreign country, even if that school does participate, that's considered an ineligible entity for the purposes of this regulation. 

Let's talk about what has changed. The new regulations have removed limitations on the amount of a program that may be offered under a written arrangement between two affiliated eligible institutions. That would be two eligible institutions owned or controlled by the same individual partnership or corporation. Previously we had a limitation on that, as of July 1, or actually underlying implementation if you choose there would be no limitation on that percentage. We've also added a provision that specifies nothing prohibits an institution that is using written arrangements from aligning or modifying its curriculum in order to meet the recommendations and requirements of industry advisory boards, widely recognized industry standards, organizations, or other industry recognized    bodies for making changes to the programs. This basically just provides flexibility so that a school may use the standards that, especially if it's a program for which are preparing people to go into a specific field, that you can recognize the standards of those that are applicable to those employers or those organizations when determining what the curriculum will be.

We've also added a provision here that explains the process for calculating the amount of a program offered by an ineligible entity, and we consider that a course is provided by an ineligible entity with which the institution has the written arrangement has authority over the design, administration, or instruction. And that includes, but is not limited to, establishing requirements for successful completion, delivering instruction, and assessing student learning. Something which may affect you or your institution if you have internships or externships. We've added this provision under 668.5 H that excludes some types of the following types of arrangements from the regulatory limitations in this section. I want to be careful to understand and be sure to understand rather that we're not saying that you can't have these types of arrangements, you certainly can, it's just that they will not be subject to the limitations under 668.5, so that would be acceptance by the institution rather of transfer credits where prior learning assessment from another from another institution.

The internship or externship portion of the program if that portion is governed by accreditation agencies standards, or, in the case of an eligible foreign institution, the standards of an outside oversight agency, such as an accrediting agency, or government entity that requires the oversight and supervision of the institution where the institution is responsible for the internship or externship, and students are monitored by qualified institutional personnel. So, if what you're offering in that internship or externship meets all of these stipulations then it would not be subject to the restrictions that are in 668.5 

Next, we're going to move on to clock to credit our conversion, because we have made some fairly significant changes to that with these new regulations                  So first, we're going to start with the requirements for clock to credit hour conversions. And for some programs and we'll look at what those are. The institution is required to ensure that each credit hour is associated with the minimum number of clock hours, and this conversion serves two purposes. The first is to determine that the program meets the minimum length requirements for eligibility and to determine the award amount within each payment period. It’s important that you recognize both of those. Like the first one is probably more apparent, because obviously you need to determine if that program is eligible overall given that having the minimum length per the minimum length requirement and you will be required to do that when undergoing recertification, but the second there is as important as well, and that's to determine the award amount within each payment period. So, you have to look at those payment periods and make certain that the number of hours that you're determining that student is taking, and that specific enrollment status do equate to the minimum number of clock hours. The conversion applies on a course-by-course basis and the conversion requirements cannot be applied at the program level. 

So, let's take a look here what the exemptions are. An educational program is not subject to the clock to credit hour conversion. First, the program is at least 2 academic years in length and provides an associate degree or higher-level degrees. So that right there excludes many degrees granting program, so 2 academic years in length and provides an associate degree or higher-level degree. Certainly baccalaureate, master’s agreement there as well. Each course within the program is acceptable. Let's just say, or rather each course within the program is acceptable for full credit toward a specific requirement. That's an important stipulation as well as specific degree program at that institution provided that the program requires at least 2 years of study, and the institution can demonstrate at least one student graduated from the program during the current year or the two years... two preceding award years, so you could have, just as an example, a community college might offer a program like this where the program is doing is in does not lead to an associate degree, but the program, all the credits in their program, are acceptable for full credit toward a specific associate degree that Community college offers and that would be at least two years which an associate degree would be. And lastly, that you can demonstrate that at least one student graduated from that program during the current award year, or two preceding years, and this is to sort of ensure that there is a certain reality associated with this. With this exception that students who are enrolled in this program actually are going on to this associate degree program, so that there's some reality to that relationship. 

In performing clock to credit hour conversions, we have to look at the... want to look here at the effect of rounding, and the first thing we see here is the results of a conversion calculation can never be rounded up because we're looking at a minimum number of clock of hours they have to be offered. So, when you're converting the clock errors to credit hours if it comes out to let's say 22.7, you will not round up a 23 because you do have to have...There's a minimum number of clock hours have credit hours rather has to be established, so no rounding up under the previous requirements. We did require institutions to round the results of conversion calculations down to the nearest whole number if that is the institution using decimals or the number of decimals the school awarded used to award credit, so we did have this requirement to round down to the whole number or to the number of decimals, the institution used. We have changed that, so one of these new regulations we're going to permit institutions to use the decimal results of the conversion, regardless of how they award credits, and we'll see how those functions in a moment.

So, let's take a look at the credit hour conversion and look at the current regulations. And then we're going to look at how the new regulations would change that. So, if a course in the program did not require out of class work, the conversion formula required a ratio of 37.5 in class hours to each semester hours. So, we're talking about the basic requirement here, not the application of out of out of class out of class work, just the basic the basic formula which was 37.5 in-class class hours to each semester hour or 25 in-class clock hours to each quarter hour. Now, you'll note here that schools were permitted to use lower thresholds. They could go back and use the 30:1 or 20:1 ratio if they could demonstrate that each semester or quarter hour was associated with the least 7.5 or 5 out of class hours respectively. That would be, if 7.5 If it's semester trimester 5 hours if it's quarter and that the institutions accreditor had not identified any problems with the institution’s establishment of credit hours.

Now let's move to the new regulations, effective July 1, 2021, or as indicated there, implemented early at your discretion if you choose to do that, there's no consideration of outside hours or out of class hours in this new conversion formula and the conversion formula is just a straightforward 30 in class clock hours to each semester hours each semester, hour rather or 20 in class clock hours to each quarter hour and some of that may go back a little way. Unfortunately, I have to number myself among. You might remember the rules prior to 2010, which is what we've essentially gone back to here. 

As a conversion example, you have a career training program offered in semester hours. The credits in the program are not all acceptable to a single degree program at the institution, so because none of these requirements are met, this is going to be a program where clock to credit hour conversion is necessary. The program is comprised of five classes and also includes an externship and as noted, there are not out of class hours required. The institution awards credits in whole credit hours and there are no decimals. So, you can see here that we have a number of courses, and the first course is 105 hours and there are 30 out of class hours and we have 4 credits assigned. You can see that we have a second class there, 83 in class hours, 18 out 4 credits assigned for credits for the third class, 2 for the fourth, 6 for the fifth. Finally, we note that there is an internship of 375 in class hours with seven hours assigned, so our totals then are 947 in class hours, 153 out of class hours and the credits assigned are 27. 

Now, I'm going to move into the conversion under the current regulation and take a look at the conversion under the new regulations So here we noted before that out of out of class hours were not going to be a function here, or consideration. So, the first course we have 105 hours divided by what is the required 37.5 ratio. So, we have that would be 2.8. So, in this case we're rounding down to two. You can see the calculation done for each of the each of the courses you see there, all of them, I think are pretty self-explanatory. We're rounding down, you can see 2.21 to 2, 2.08 to 2, 2.96 to 2, 5.2 to 5. There is a little bit of a glitch here, or difference rather, with the externship. So we have 375 hours divided by 37.5 and that would yield 10, but we’ll note that it is reduced to 7 and this is because school cannot award more Title IV and more credit rather for Title IV purposes than the academic credit assigned by the institution for that internship, or externship in this case, and as you recall, that was seven hours assigned by the institution, so it cannot use 10 hours per the conversion where this only assigned 7.

So, let's look then at this conversion calculation under the new regulations that you'll see the seven that... I'm sorry, the five courses plus the internship the externship, and now we've divided by the new revised numbers so instead of dividing by 37.5, we're dividing by 30 for this semester hours and each case we're dividing by 30 and you can see that in this case we're also. We're also not rounding required around down, so we're going to use the actual decimal calculation, so we're dividing by 30 in each case, and you can see the results there. The externship is now divided by 30, but again that's reduced to 7. Why? Going back to what we said before- that's the maximum. That's the number of credits the institution assigns that internship. You cannot use this calculation to increase that number of hours, so let's take a look at the totals here. Previously, you had a total credit hour value, and, in this case, you have a total credit hour value of 26.6 and the school has chosen just to go with, and they’re not required to round down.

I want to add before we get to implementation that this change that is coming will show you that there's only two possible outcomes here. Either you're going to remain the same if you had at least 7.5 hours of outside work for each class, and many of you did, I think that was the majority of institutions you are already able to use the 30:1 calculation. So for semester hours, so this won't change anything you don't want include the outside hours anymore, but just to be dividing by 30 to one, so it will... basically nothing will change, so the only possible outcomes here are that nothing changes, or as in the case of this example, where outside courses were not included outside hours were not included, rather the number of hours actually increased, so it will stay the same or increase. Those are the only possible outcomes.

Now, let's take a look at some of the rules for how you can do this. So, the implementation of these conversion changes. We wanted to give you as much flexibility as possible here. I think we've done that. So, when the new regulatory provisions for clock to credit hour conversions are fully implemented and that would be either at your discretion or on July 1, 2021, and the program has a greater number of Title IV credit hours. That is, if you as a result of this, the number of hours increase, what are your options for transition? You can teach that remainder...the remainder of the current program to currently enrolled students in accordance with the existing conversion. The second option is for new students enrolled after the implementation date- they can be enrolled in the program under the new conversion regulations, or lastly, you may choose to switch from the old conversion calculation to the new calculation at the end of a payment period, as long as that payment period ends after the implementation date, and that would be either your implementation date if you're doing it early or July 1.

What about reporting these changes for this? If the new calculations result in an increase to the number of total four credit hours in the program? You must submit an E-App immediately and the Eligcert site is there for you to do that. To update the number of clock hours and Title IV credit hours in the program if it doesn't change the number of Title IV credit hours in a program, which is probably the likely outcome for most of you should simply update the E-App to change the number of clock hours reported when the next update or recertification application is submitted. So, I would imagine for most of you it'll be the second bullet there.

I want to look at a couple of references as we close out. I'm not going to go through all these, but just make you aware that there we have some distance education COVID-19 flexibilities. You want to take a look at those if you're not already familiar with them. I imagine we've been in this situation for quite some time, so I'm going to make the presumption that most of you have been doing distance education are aware of that guidance, but there it is, we have the rescission of Dear Colleague Gen 6-11 which David referred to earlier, and we also have a link there to the Distance Education Innovation final rule and also the 2020 FSA conference regulatory update on distance education and innovation, which you might also find useful. And before we move into our question and answer segment here, I’d like to say you can send any outstanding questions that you have for a new customer support process, and we have given you the address for that and to submit a question to that website, please enter your name, email address, topic in question and when submitting questions related to today's webinar, please select the topic FSA, Ask a Fed slash policy. 

OK, at this point we're going to move into our question-and-answer segments of this presentation and I'm going to turn it over to Benedict. Who will    read some of the questions we've received today?

OK Dave, it looks like I have a few questions for you, so we'll get started. How does a fully Hyflex course where all class sessions are offered in both faces to face and at a distance fit into the distance ed definition? Some students will attend some sessions face to face, but it is possible for a student to attend fully at a distance if that student so chooses.

I think that's a good question. In those circumstances that the course essentially is treated as a distance education course with respect to the students who are who are engaged in the course through distance education. So, the school would need to make sure that it meets all of the requirements of the definition for any of any of its students who are actually taking the course through distance education, but for practical purposes, what that will mean is the school would just need to be sure that it ensured regular and substantive interaction for students for all of the students in that course. There's at least off the top of my head, I can't think of a better way for the school to demonstrate that the course really is offered through distance education for those students who choose to use that modality 

OK, second question for the new definition of academic year under CFR 668.3. A college is required to have documentation of the student in an asynchronous program or an asynchronous coursework that the student did perform educational activities demonstrating academic engagement during the week in order for the week to be counted as a week of instruction.

That's a great question, and it actually points to an important aspect of how we define and a week of instructional time. A week of instructional time is a program-level definition. It's not a student-level definition, so we never require a school to go in and ensure that any individual student is actually engaging in coursework or some sort of academic activity every single week. The school has to ensure, and that's part of why we updated the definition, that there's an expectation for the student to do that, for all students to do that, in the program in order to count that week as a week of instruction if there's not a regularly scheduled class during that week, but you don't have to go in and evaluate every single student to make sure every single student attends every week, because that would be far beyond what we would require in on campus environment.

Follow up questions. So, you’re saying you can have asynchronous learning and clock hour schools. In what ways does the school monitor this? And I think they're responding to something that was said in the presentation.

Sure, so we gave a few examples of how that would work earlier in the presentation, but as I mentioned a clock hour program can measure clock hours in a synchronous environment, and that's the sort of more traditional version of instruction where the instructor is present, and I'll give an example. In a Zoom meeting with all of their students and they're watching, and the students also have their cameras on. That's a supervised clock hour that could, as long as the students are sort of present and listening or engaging throughout the hour. And the other way that the school can demonstrate that a student is in attendance in an asynchronous activity. So, let's give an example. Maybe a student is engaged in an interactive program that the school has provided where they’re answering questions, they’re watching some portion of the hour, they’re watching videos, and responding to what they're watching. In that case, the technology needs to be sophisticated enough to actually monitor what the student is doing. Is the student entering responses? Is the student clicking around in the online activity? You have to ensure that technology for an asynchronous clock hour is really monitoring exactly what the student is doing and that what the student was doing was actually part of the definition of academic engagement. So, both factors have to be present. So, as I mentioned before, that's a pretty high bar, but schools should do their best to make sure that they have clear documentation of that. If they want to record clock hours that way.

OK, thank you. I have another question, so just emailing a professor is not academic activity, correct? 

So, emailing an instructor about course content could be considered academic activity as part of the definition of academic engagement. So, if you can record that the student is asking a specific course-related question, they're not asking about the weather, they’re not asking about something else, that is an academic activity that could be used to substantiate attendance for return to Title IV purposes, for example, but it's important that it’s understood that you, the school, ensure that that's an actual... that's a substantive course-related email but as long as we have that in place, the department has assurance that the student is there. The student is still engaged, and the student is actually sort of participating in the coursework, and that's really what we're talking about when we're talking about an academic activity for returning Title IV. 

On clock hour students were vary in how much time they will take to be academically engaged. Does the institution use the minimum hours or an average? How is the clock hour effort calculated? 

And another good question. You cannot use estimates. There's never a case where you can estimate the amount of time that a student is performing an activity. You have to be able to monitor what they're doing and like I said before, the easiest way to do that and the most straightforward is just like an on-campus class where you are actually watching all of the students as you're doing the instruction, but if you have asynchronous coursework where there's a learning platform and the students logged in, you really need to be able to show that the student is actually doing that work, while they are earning their clock hour. We don't have any minimum threshold for how often this system has to check what student is doing, but as we mentioned earlier, it cannot be: student checks in at the beginning of the hour and then checks out at the end of the hour. It really has to demonstrate that throughout the hour the student is actually doing activities that reflect academic engagement.

With these new definitions of distance education and academic engagement, will this have an impact on institutions who are not required to take attendance? Meaning if often distance education programs will all online courses or programs offered as distance education be subject to the 14-day rule when it comes to determining if a student has withdrawn?    

That's a great question. So, this...I think this question is pointing back to some of the guidance that the department offered way back in 2011 when we did the program integrity regulations and at that time we had some questions about whether logging into classes constituted attendance-taking if a school was monitoring those logins, and what we said at the time was that monitoring logins does not, by itself, cause an institution to be treated as an institution that's required to take attendance. And the important factor here is that if an institution is required to take attendance, means that they actually must use attendance records to establish the student’s last date of attendance for withdrawal purposes in the R2T4 calculation and they would have to ensure that they determined that the student withdrew no later than 14 days after the last date of attendance. However, we want to be clear that nothing about that guidance has changed with these regulations and just because you have a distance education program does not mean that you're necessarily monitoring all of your students’ online activities for the purposes of ensuring academic engagement. Now, you might be... if a school is using its online platform identifying academic engagement for its own purposes, that could be enough to treat... for the school to be treated as an attendance-taking institution, but many institutions aren't necessarily doing that. They might be collecting login information, they might be collecting assignments through their system, but if they're not doing it in a consistent way throughout the payment period or period of enrollment, it's not necessarily going to rise to the level of having the school treated as an attendance-taking institution. So, just offering distance education course does not alone result in being treated as an attendance-taking school and these are things that have to be determined on a case-by-case basis so a school really needs to evaluate what data it's collecting, how often it's evaluating whether students are academically engaged, and if it's really doing that every day or every week then I think that guidance would point to the fact that the school would be treated as an attendance taking school, but that's not necessarily going to be the case for all institutions and we would encourage institutions to make a careful judgement about how they're using that distance education data. 

OK, and then I have two more questions. One is on substantive definition and the other regular definition. First one is this substantive definition. Could you give examples of what is or is not direct instruction?                     

Sure, so yeah, that makes sense. An example of direct instruction would be what I mentioned before, where there is a Zoom meeting or a Microsoft Live Meeting where the instructor is on video or non-video providing instruction directly to the students who are in attendance. They have an opportunity to provide feedback, the students can ask questions, or this instructor can call on them etc. That would definitely be a version of instruction that's not direct might be the instructor who asks students to complete an assignment on the learning platform and submit an answer and the instructor, then later, asynchronously provides feedback on that student’s response in the learning environment. That's not direct instruction as contemplated in the definition of substantive. In that definition, direct instruction is really intended to be a situation where both synchronous environment where both the instructor and the student are present at the same time and are actually engaged at the same time. 

For the regular definition how can competency-based programs, which are not usually regular, demonstrate the predictable and scheduled part? How could office hours fit in? 

So it sounds like this questioner is familiar with how some competency-based programs are structured, but I think office hours are a way that we've heard some competency-based programs fulfill this requirement under the prior definition of distance ed. Essentially, if the school offers regular and predictable... sorry, scheduled, and predictable opportunities for students to interact with instructors who meet accrediting agency requirements for instruction, even if those aren't mandated, as long as the opportunities are available and that students are able to check in with their instructors and ask question and then the instructor responds to questions when asked, the school can meet the requirement that way. Office hours are a great way of ensuring that students have that resource available to them and that there's clear opportunities for when they can interact with their instructor and get some help 

Dave, I'm going to turn it over to Natasha at this time and she will ask the last few questions. Thank you, Benedict. And What I'm going to do is move down to the second portion of the presentation and I'm going to begin with this question which says, I have a question about the early implementation discuss earlier in the presentation. What exactly are we documenting? Early implementation of our institution already has a yes for distance ed on our PPA E-car an hour online classes meet the requirements of the distance education requirement. Is there something else we are supposed to be implementing?                     

Thanks, Natasha I mean, we have to draw a distinction here that was... I don't want to be clear that these regulations... these new regulations that we have to address areas of distance education. They did not establish that schools may use distance education that's been in effect for a very long time, so no, if you have an existing distance education program and that's met all the requirements, that you all those requirements, then no, this is not...we're not saying that you have to re-implement that, we're talking about...here is our provision specific to these regulations. So, for instance, if a school wanted to change clock to credit hour conversion 37.5 to 30:1 that would be an earlier implementation and it would and to end to do that, it would need to establish that it is early, and that's early implementing a specific provision, but generally with early implementation we do it by section. So, if you had something is 668.5. You would be in early implementing everything in 668.5, right so? We, for example, one of the things I had was takes 668.5 where we said that if you have an internship or externship that is under the auspices of the school itself and where the school oversees the activity that's going on there. A couple of other stipulations there that would not be subject to the restrictions and 668.5: if you had such an internship, and that would generally be with an ineligible entity, and you wanted to implement that early, you would just indicate that that's what you're doing, so will be for that specific section, so you'll be implementing everything. I'm just 668.5 early, as David pointed out, it's beginning of the presentation We don't have a specific protocol for early implementation A best practice might be to have it documented somewhere that you are early implementing a specific section of the regulation, or all of them. So, you say we're early implementing 668.5, and you might want to have that in writing somewhere and maybe have an institutional official who was designated to be able to make those kinds of decisions just signed to that effect. And again, I don't...please don't think that's a hard and fast requirement, that you have to rush out there and do that. I think it's a good idea to be able to document to reviewers and auditors what you have really implemented, but again, it would be changes specific to these regulations that you're implementing and by section.                  

Thank you, Greg. I have a question of clarification. When is it mandatory for an institution to disclose job placement rates? Is it based upon institutional type or program types?    

We are... Dave, do you want to bail me out? I’m drawing a blank on the     job placement rates. I think those regulations are... really refer to                  making sure the placement is available when asked. Essentially the school has to ensure that if they are advertising the rates... that if someone comes to them and says, how did you calculate that rate?  What exactly did you do to figure out how what the placement rate for the program was? The school is going to have to come to demonstrate the accuracy and truthfulness of its placement rate to the end individual that's asking, but the key factor is that when you advertise the range that you need to be able to do that and those are applicable. I think that's under 668.14. That's programmed dissipation agreement. So that's your program dissipation agreement. So, when you sign that essentially all those rules are included from that. So, if you're, again, if you are advertising those rates and there would be any institution that advertises those rates would be required to back that up, and what we took out was the requirement that you                  have to show the methodology involved in, but you would still have to disclose those rates.

Thank you. We have another question which asks on program length to Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico, or the Pacific Islands have quote, unquote adjacent states. 

That's an excellent question, and generally we have viewed this as a geographical function. So, in those terms, no they don't, and we didn't say anything about Canadian provinces, so I'm not sure that how much a British Columbia would not come into play there. No, I would say we could take it back and think about it, but I think at this point they don't and you rule... when you think about the reason for the rule, it was so that, we use the New York and New Jersey example, that it would be fairly common for people to be training in New Jersey and because that metro area certainly New York, that is very expensive and very covers those states that be very common for those students to go across to that state. Now we understand that it's possible for a student in any state to go very far afield. They might go across the country or something like that. So, that is possible and, in this state, like Alaska or Hawaii certainly is nothing contiguous to it I would argue if they left Alaska or left Hawaii to go elsewhere, there's nothing contiguous when they really would really be to go anywhere. I mean, I don't think you could argue I'm New York and New Jersey that would be a cross that line. It would be to go probably to any of the 50 states so it really wouldn't be applicable, so I'm going to go and say geographic and Dave, do you have anything you want to say about that?    

I think you pretty much summed it up, Greg. Yeah, we currently would not, I think, treat those states as having adjacent states for that purpose, but we can certainly think about it. I don't think that's what was contemplated. It was very good question and yes, something to think about.

OK, let's try one more here on if a semester-based, credit hour 4-year public institution has a master’s degree program that is 1 1/2 years in length, is that program subject to the clock to credit conversion rules.

The Master’s degree program which leads it...it's an actual master’s degree program that leads to a master’s degree, right? That's why I gather if it leads to a master’s degree, it wouldn't be subjected clock to credit conversion to if it actually leads to a master’s degree.

OK, I have another question coming in. It seems like more clarification is needed on the levels you refer to the institutional level accreditation of distance education, while the FSA Handbook refers to the program level accreditation for distance ED programs. Can you clarify? And that seems to be a recurring question about the difference.

Sure, so this one is a bit confusing and I can understand why so there's a regulatory requirement in, I believe it's 34 CFR 668.8, and it is a program level...it says program eligibility requirement and it says that in order for your program offered through distance education to be Title IV eligible your institution has to be approved by an accrediting agency to offer distance education and the accrediting agency has to be recognized by the Department to accredit distance education programs so that's what it's really saying...is, your creditor has to approve you as an institution to do distance education in general, and if you don't have that approval, then programs that use distance education are ineligible, but programs that are on campus are eligible. So, whereas it's an institutional accreditation the impacts are felt at the program level. 

OK, thank you Dave. 

Thank you, Greg. At this time, we are close to 3:30 hour. Is there anything else that you would like to share that was a question that stood out before we close out today?    

Yeah, Natasha, this is David. I wanted to bring up one question to Dave and Greg. Are they closed out today we had a couple of questions around schools thinking that the waivers for the distance education due to COVID? It ended December 31st, 2020, so if you could just speak one more time about the COVID flexibilities that you addressed earlier.

Sure, and I'm glad you brought that day. Thanks. So, I definitely understand the confusion there because the department has had to update the time frames for its guidance numerous times, but the last time that we updated the time frame for many of our waivers and flexibilities for COVID-19, including the distance education waivers, we extended those waivers all the way out until the end of the payment period that begins after the end of the national emergency. So, December 31st is no longer the date and as I mentioned earlier in the presentation, we don't know what the last date will be, and in fact the last date of the waivers will differ depending on the institution and when its payment periods begin, but it is going to be some time out in the future because the national emergency is still in effect. So, December 31st for these purposes is not the consideration. It's really... you're looking to watch carefully for when the COVID 19 national emergency ends and then look to your next payment period and its end date to determine when the waivers will cease.

Thank you, David. Are there any other questions that need to be addressed before we closeout or any other comments? OK, with that being said, we’d like to thank everyone for joining us on today's webinar. Any further questions can be submitted through our Customer Support Help Center which was mentioned earlier at fsapartners.ed.gov/help-center.  OK, we also want to encourage you to participate in our last session that is coming up on subscription-based programs. It will also be presented by Greg Martin as well as David Musser on Monday May 10th, 2021, at the same time as this one: 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM Eastern Standard Time. We hope you enjoyed this presentation, this webinar, and we just hope that everyone has a great day. Thank you      

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