In an effort to increase efficiency (and reduce paper & ink costs) the Distance Education Office is changing the procedures we use to process requests for approval (when required by the academic department or program coordinator) by main campus students to take a distance education course. The process will be the same for site-based, online, undergraduate, or graduate courses.

Effective for Summer 2011 requests, the form is web-based and will be routed electronically to the program coordinator upon submission by the main campus student making the request. The form should be used when the academic department or program coordinator requires that main campus students obtain approval before enrolling in a distance education class. If no approval is needed (i.e., distance education program managers exercise discretion over enrollment), the form is not required to be used. Faculty, academic program coordinators, and distance education program managers who receive requests from main campus students to enroll in a distance education course should direct students to the online form (http://extension.appstate.edu/request_c2c.php). The form is located, along with instructions for administrators/faculty and students, in the Faculty Handbook section of the Distance Education Website in the “Course Registration Requests” item.

Procedure

The form (shown here) will be completed by the student. URL: http://extension.appstate.edu/request_c2c.php

After clicking “continue” the student is asked to review his or her information and then to click “submit.” When the student clicks “submit,” he or she will receive a “confirmation of submission” with a notification to contact the Distance Education Office if his/her request does not receive a response within 10 days.

The completed form (shown below) is routed via email to the Academic Program Coordinator associated with the program (please inform our office when changes to Program Coordinators occur). The subject line will be: A request for off-campus enrollment has been received from XXXX XXXX. The Academic Program Coordinator will click “Approve” or “Deny” (both are circled in red in this example).

When either “Approve” or “Deny” have been clicked by the Program Coordinator, the results (along with all of the form information) are pushed via email to the Director of Distance Education who will push it to the correct distance education program manager.

If the request has been approved by the Program Coordinator, the distance education program manager will take one of the following actions:

1. Verify that a seat is available, check for course restrictions/prerequisites (if applicable), award the permit when conditions have been satisfied, and notify the student that he/she can register.
2. Put the student on the waitlist and notify the student that he/she is on the waitlist and will be notified when any change in status occurs. D.E. program managers will continue to maintain waitlists as they have in the past. The only change will be to the method by which students get added to waitlists when approvals are required by the department.
3. Notify the student that no seats are available and his/her request cannot be met.

Ideally, all of this will take place within 10 days, so that the student will not be alarmed and contact the Distance Education Office.