Guiding Principles

How do we provide the best possible, professionally-focused, accessible, innovative and hands-on experience for undergraduate students? The answer is simple: our faculty. Our faculty are engaged. They want to see our students succeed. Our faculty are carefully selected because of their drive to provide the kind of education that NLU believes in and has been proven successful. For this reason, we’ve developed some sure-fire methods to make sure that students have a consistent experience with faculty that are engaged from day-to-day, week-to-week.

Our Online faculty…

• Host virtual office hours and Zoom sessions during Week 1 of class to meet and greet their students.

• “Check in” to their class at least 5 days per week.

• Post responses in discussion boards, or equivalent engagement platform, at least 2-3 times per week.

• Provide one overall post for each discussion question/forum summarizing your impressions of the student posts and providing feedback/additional context as needed.

• Emails and phone calls are returned within 48 hours to students and University staff and administrators.

• Assignments are graded within 7 days using the rubrics embedded in the course for grading.

• Post at least one weekly announcement, outlining expectations for the week and wrapping up anything needed from last week. Announcements begin 2 weeks prior to the class start and end the last week of class.

• Submit EAB reports as required, and ad-hoc reports as needed.

• Provide detailed feedback on assignments--both in the rubric, assignment box and, when warranted, within the submitted document as well.

• Work collaboratively with their holistic student success team to identify and address student interventions, as needed.

• Commit to our NLU 10 Principles of Online Teaching, a combination of mission-aligned and evidence-based instructional practice meant to support our model of high-impact and high-engagement (HIHE) online teaching practice.