How do we create meaningful connections with students when teaching hundreds of learners in asynchronous online courses?
That question guided October’s Faculty Voices session led by Dr. Tyler Garner from the Department of Kinesiology. The session demystified Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI) requirements and demonstrated how faculty can foster genuine engagement at scale without overwhelming their workload.
Understanding RSI: Beyond Compliance
The session opened with a critical distinction: RSI is not just a federal regulation to satisfy—it’s a framework for effective online teaching that directly impacts student success. The 2021 Department of Education clarification defined RSI as an interaction that is instructor-initiated, academic in nature, and predictably scheduled. Regular means interaction follows a predictable schedule, so students know when to expect instructor engagement. Substantive means the interaction focuses on academic content through direct instruction, individualized feedback, content questions and answers, or facilitated discussions.
Since 1992, the Higher Education Act has distinguished legitimate distance education from correspondence courses, but the regulations remained vague until recent years. Cases like Saint Mary of the Woods College losing federal financial aid eligibility in 2011 and Western Governance University facing an Office of Inspector General audit highlighted the real consequences of non-compliance. The session framed RSI as quality teaching, not just compliance—particularly for large online enrollments.
What Counts as RSI and What Doesn’t
The session clarified specific activities that meet RSI criteria. According to Department of Education guidelines, substantive interaction requires at least two of the following: providing direct instruction, assessing or giving personalized feedback on coursework, responding to content-related questions, facilitating group discussions, or conducting other approved instructional activities.
Activities that count toward RSI include actively facilitating discussion boards with comments and replies to student posts, posting announcements relevant to course content, providing personalized comments on individual assignments beyond rubric checkmarks, and contacting students with feedback based on exam or assignment performance. Group-level feedback that synthesizes patterns and guides next steps also qualifies.
Activities that do not count include announcements unrelated to course content such as campus events or “grades posted” notices, adding numeric grades without explanatory feedback, welcome messages or general information emails, and unmoderated discussion forums where students interact without instructor presence. The distinction matters because RSI directly influences student retention, belonging, and learning outcomes. The session emphasized that students in large online courses often report never receiving personalized communication from instructors—a gap that RSI practices are designed to address.
Tools That Scale: Panel Insights
A panel featuring Dr. Christy Spivey from Economics, Dr. Heather Arterburn from Biology, and Sarah Suraj from the Center for Distance Education shared practical approaches for implementing RSI in large courses.
Inspire for Faculty emerged as a cornerstone tool for scalable outreach. This Canvas-integrated platform tracks student engagement and allows faculty to send personalized emails to groups of students based on their performance or activity levels. The tool automatically inserts each student’s first name or preferred name, creating individualized messages at scale. Faculty can filter students by engagement level, grade performance, or factors like first-term status or course retake status.
Canvas Grade Book features provide another efficient pathway for targeted communication. Faculty can message students who haven’t submitted assignments, who scored above or below certain thresholds, or whose work hasn’t been graded yet—all without manually tracking down email addresses. The SpeedGrader comment library allows faculty to save reusable comments and then personalize each note to keep feedback substantive while managing time.
Design Plus enhances both course aesthetics and functionality, offering tokens that personalize course pages with student names and quick-check questions that increase engagement with content. The tool helps create interactive experiences that keep students actively processing material rather than passively scrolling, improving page flow and reducing endless scrolling.
H5P provides extensive interactive question types and includes scenario-based branching activities where students choose their learning path. This tool allows learners to explore different theories or approaches, making choices that lead to personalized learning experiences without explicit instructor direction for each pathway. The branching scenarios proved particularly powerful for letting students learn through the consequences of their choices.
Perusall supports social annotation, placing students in small auto-generated groups to read and discuss texts together. The platform’s algorithm can provide initial grading based on time spent and comment quality, which instructors can then review and adjust. This approach allows faculty to engage with groups rather than individual students, making rich discussion more manageable in large courses while letting instructors view students’ thinking traces in context.
Making Students Feel Seen
The panel addressed the challenge of helping students feel valued rather than invisible in large online environments. Key strategies included using smaller discussion groups to reduce intimidation, creating videos with faculty faces and voices to establish presence, and carefully choosing vocabulary that communicates belief in student growth.
Video announcements proved particularly powerful for building instructor presence. Faculty reported that seeing an instructor’s face and hearing their tone transforms the online experience, making abstract course requirements feel personal and supportive. Canvas Studio makes this accessible and allows faculty to embed quiz questions directly in videos for trackable engagement.
The session also highlighted the importance of scaffolding assignments throughout the semester rather than waiting until midterm or finals. Early, low-stakes assignments allow faculty to identify access issues, technology problems, or engagement concerns before they become critical obstacles to success. Pre-programming weekly announcements in Canvas at the start of the semester allows faculty to schedule words of encouragement, exam reminders, and motivational messages that post automatically throughout the term.
Rethinking Discussion Boards and Group Work
Rather than abandoning discussion boards, the session encouraged redesigning them for deeper engagement. Structured prompts that require students to apply, synthesize, or debate concepts—and that ask students to pose questions to their peers—generate more meaningful exchanges than simple recall questions. Breaking large classes into smaller discussion groups allows faculty to respond to groups as a whole rather than individual posts, meeting RSI requirements while managing workload.
For group projects, panelists shared approaches including peer evaluations integrated into Canvas assignments with configurable anonymity and rubrics, role-based grading where each student receives credit for their specific contribution using rotating roles like researcher, presenter, editor, and coordinator, and collaboration grades that multiply the project grade by each student’s teamwork score. Creating team charters for group work explicitly outlines expectations for mutual accountability, recognizing that part of learning group work involves developing leadership and management skills.
Emerging Support: AI and Automation
The session acknowledged emerging AI tools that may support RSI implementation while emphasizing that automation should supplement rather than replace human-led interaction. The university is testing Cloud Force, an AI chatbot that can answer common student questions by drawing from course syllabi and materials, freeing faculty to focus on substantive academic interaction. The goal is to use technology to handle routine policy and syllabus questions so faculty can devote attention to meaningful academic engagement that counts toward RSI.
Key Takeaways
The session reinforced that RSI is an essential federal standard with real consequences for non-compliance, but more importantly, it’s a proven framework for improving student outcomes in online learning. Not all interaction qualifies—it must be instructor-initiated, academic, and predictable. Large course enrollments don’t preclude personalized interaction when faculty use strategic tools and intentional course design.
By leveraging platforms like Inspire for Faculty, Canvas features, Design Plus, H5P, and Perusall, instructors can create genuine connections with students at scale. The key is moving from passive content delivery to participatory learning experiences where students feel recognized, supported, and engaged with both their instructor and the academic material. Presence beats volume—short, targeted videos and specific comments outperform long, generic updates.
Join the Conversation
How are you structuring predictable, substantive instructor touchpoints in large online courses? What combinations of grouping, peer review, and targeted outreach have worked for you? Which interactive elements, like QuickChecks, H5P, or Perusall, have improved engagement without adding grading load? Share your strategies and insights in the comments, or reach out to the Center for Research on Teaching and Learning Excellence (CRTLE) at CRTLE@uta.edu for support in implementing these approaches in your courses.