General Policy Handbook

 

Distance Education

Processes for distance education are no different from those of non-distance education except for the following:

Scheduling
  1. Distance education courses may normally be commenced at any time, except when ACAS is in recess.

    Authentication
  2.  The assessor must authenticate1 any work submitted for assessment, that is, that it is not plagiarized, colluded or based on fictitious data.
  3. ACAS shall authenticate the submitted work either directly or through a third party. Direct authentication shall be by:
    1. Personal visit for supervisory sessions
    2. Personal interview of progress
    3. Working with the student from conception of the topic, through data collection, a series of drafts and corrections to a final product for assessment.
    4. Oral examination or defense of the student's ideas upon which the work is based, either in person or by telephone.
  4. Third party authentication shall be by telephone call, email reference or written statement by a local organizational supervisor that the work is authentic. The identity of the supervisor and the telephone number, email address, or address shall be obtained independently from the student, e.g. through organizational links.
  5. A contemporaneous written record of the authentication shall be made and kept in the student’s file.

    6. Review
  6. Review will normally require a feedback form to be emailed to students, for responses to be sent by email to a neutral third party.2
  7. It is preferable to get progress reports from students doing longer papers, including by breaking larger research pieces into stages: topic, proposal, literature review, methodology, data collection, analysis, implications, introduction, or into chapters.

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1Cf. Other credentials
2 The reason is that students cannot respond to the tutor anonymously by email.

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