Off-Campus Courses

Off-campus courses must be approved for delivery each semester. An off-campus course is defined by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board as a class in which a majority (more than 50%) of the instruction occurs when the students and instructor(s) are in the same physical location and the location is not the institution’s main campus. Please note: Non-health-related courses taught at TWU’s Dallas and Houston Campuses are considered off-campus by THECB rules and require approval each semester.

Faculty for Off-Campus Courses

Faculty for undergraduate and graduate level off-campus courses are selected and evaluated by the same standards, review, and approval procedures used by TWU to select and evaluate faculty responsible for on-campus courses. TWU Faculty Success, provides training and support to enhance the added skills required of faculty teaching courses through electronic means. The instructor of record shall bear responsibility for the delivery of instruction and for evaluation of student progress.

Course Approval Process

State rules require the university to notify other area institutions of the intent to offer courses (upper-division and graduate-level) off-campus well in advance of the beginning of the class, allowing two months for those institutions to protest potential overlapping of course offerings to the Coordinating Board. The steps below describe how TWU implements this requirement:

1. At least two to three months before registration for off-campus courses, departments should submit to the Director of the Center for Faculty Success an email providing the proposed off-campus course name and number, and proposed location information: the site name, address, and zip code. This information and additional information is also needed by the University Scheduling Office.
2. The Faculty Success Director will notify area universities (within 50 mile radius) and the Coordinating Board, and if there are no objections within two months, the course can be offered as requested. If there are protests, TWU can appeal to the Coordinating Board.

Lower level (1000 and 2000) courses are approved annually. The Faculty Success Director coordinates those approvals as well. All courses must be approved each time they are offered, even if they have been approved at the same location previously. Courses offered at the Collin Higher Education Center do not have to be approved through this process but must be upper-division and must be required for approved degrees offered through CHEC.