Distance education

IPEDS does not ask institutions to report a percentage of online instruction for most purposes. Instead it uses a binary for courses and programs: the instructional content is delivered exclusively via the qualifying technologies. Hybrid or blended courses in which a substantial portion of instruction occurs face-to-face are reported as not distance education. Students enrolled exclusively in distance education courses, some distance education courses, or no distance education courses are counted separately in enrollment surveys.

Example: an institution offers a bachelor’s program in which every required course is delivered through its learning management system and scheduled video sessions. Students may come to campus once for a one-day orientation and for proctored exams. Under the IPEDS definition this is a distance education program. If the same program required students to attend three weeks of in-person labs each year, those labs would be instructional and the program would no longer qualify as exclusively distance education.

Correspondence education also separates students from instructors but lacks the regular and substantive interaction requirement. Correspondence courses are not eligible for the same Title IV treatment as distance education. Synchronous learning and asynchronous learning are delivery modes inside distance education; either can satisfy the definition if interaction is supported. Hybrid learning mixes distance and face-to-face instructional time and therefore falls outside the exclusive distance education classification used by IPEDS.

Labeling any course that uses a learning management system as distance education, even when most class meetings are on campus. Treating a temporary remote semester during an emergency as a planned distance education offering for reporting purposes. Confusing the institutional percentage of students taking some online courses with the percentage of programs that can be completed entirely at a distance.