Online Instruction

The College of Arts and Sciences maintains a strong tradition of offering courses taught exclusively in person, consistent with Lewis & Clark’s identity as a residential college. While academic departments may propose to offer a given course using an online model, approval is subject to Curriculum Committee review and faculty participation in training, which meets our obligations under our agreement with the National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements (NC-SARA). The majority of Lewis & Clark’s courses will be taught in person.

For courses that have also been approved to be taught online, it is important to note the following parameters:

  • Course structures—class size caps, enrollment restrictions, instructional evaluation, and registration procedures—are the same for online and in-person sections of a given course.
  • Departments and programs may propose a technology fee, to be applied to online sections, to cover associated expenses.
  • All synchronous course sections, whether in-person or online, must be offered in approved time slots, unless granted an exception by the Curriculum Committee. It is expected that courses will meet synchronously unless a special exception is made by the Curriculum Committee to allow a course section to meet asynchronously (without an assigned meeting time).
  • All online sections of a course must use a learning management system supported by Lewis & Clark.
  • All students enrolled in a particular section are expected to access the course in the same manner. A course section may not be designated as online, or as asynchronous, for only a portion of the enrolled students. This policy is not intended to facilitate online or asynchronous instruction as a means to address temporary extenuating circumstances of individual instructors or students. This policy addresses courses that are offered, by intentional design, in an online or distance-learning format, for all students enrolled in the class. 
  • Curriculum Committee approval to teach a course via online modality does not apply retroactively to prior or in-progress semesters.
  • Students may not choose to remotely attend in-person classes.
  • Students participating in overseas and off-campus programs may not use online instruction to simultaneously take College of Arts and Sciences courses that are not part of their overseas programs.