UNM labels courses in very specific ways to describe how they are delivered.

Online

Delivered via the internet in either synchronous or asynchronous formats, the student in an online course has no in-person meetings with the instructor or student peers. All content, learning activities and assessments are delivered online.

Hybrid

Hybrid courses are a blend of instructional methods. Essentially half the course experience is online and combined with regularly scheduled meetings at a physical location.

Web-enhanced

A web-enhanced course is a traditional face-to-face course that uses UNM's official learning management system to expand student learning beyond the boundaries of the classroom.

Neither all educators nor all universities use these labels in the same way. You may also see terms such as blended, hy-flex, or flipped classroom to describe quite a wide variety of instructional modalities. The definitions above are specific to UNM.

Starting in Summer 2021, the U.S. Department of Education will implement new regulations for what is required to ensure regular and substantive interaction in online courses. In order to ensure UNM’s compliance with this new regulation, UNM Online, the Center for Digital Learning, and the Office of the Provost collaborated to develop the “Regular and Substantive Interaction Training” (RASI Training) to ensure our online instructors understand these new requirements and are properly trained to maintain quality in all online courses at UNM. Instructors teaching classes that are not fully online, but still contain online components, will find several benefits from completing this training. 

Moving forward, instructors teaching courses scheduled as “Online” or "Hybrid" at all campuses must complete the RASI Training in Learning Central prior to the beginning of the Fall 2021 semester. This training takes approximately 30 minutes to complete. If the instructor has completed the Evidence-Based Practices for Teaching Online (EBPTO) training since Fall 2019 or a relevant and documented training at a branch campus, then the RASI Training is not required. UNM must require this training to be compliant with state, federal, and accreditation policies on remote or distance learning.

How to access RASI training in UNM Learning Central:

• Go to https://learningcentral.unm.edu 
• Log in with UNM net id 
• Click on left-hand menu "To-Do: Take Courses" 
• Select and click on "Complete online course Regular and Substantive Interaction Training" 
• Click on Red "Start Course" button 
• Click on Blue "Regular and Substantive Interaction Training" 
• Start Course. 
• The narrated content is the same as the written content. You can move through the written content by clicking the advance buttons.   

An instructor who has completed the Evidence-Based Practices for Teaching Online (EBPTO) training since Fall 2019 or a relevant and documented training at a branch campus is not required to complete the RASI Training.