By ALICIA FEYERHERM
Tiger Media Network
The Fort Hays State University Online Student Government Association (OSGA) met Tuesday night.
The group discussed revisiting a timely grading policy. In March, OSGA passed a resolution stating that the definition of timely grading for online student coursework should be clarified and that FHSU faculty should adhere to the best practices for timely grading as outlined in the Faculty and Unclassified Staff Handbook.
“Now that there’s a lot of on-campus students also taking online courses, the timely grading issue is pretty much university-wide,” OSGA President Eileen Moore said.
OSGA Advisor Professor Elodie Jones said the Faculty Senate is looking to advance this issue.
“It’s also the Senate’s intention of supporting all students with regard to timely grading and not leaving students in a lurch with regard to what is going on in their classes, which again is appalling to me,” Jones said.
OSGA plans to review the previous resolution and make any necessary edits.
OSGA has two upcoming events. The first is a Tiger Talk with Assistant Provost for Academic Programs Angela Pool-Funai, who will present on the new cloud-based catalog and degree maps. This event will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, December 2, via Zoom. Next is a social coffee talk. Students are encouraged to join and interact with other online students at a social coffee talk at 9 a.m. on December 6.
“This was kind of born out of comments from Distance Learning Week, wanting more chances to interact,” Moore said.
Online students have noted that they have opportunities to interact with other students about course content through discussion boards, but want something more.
“It kind of gives us some perspective into the loneliness and isolation and the desire for more things like this,” Moore said.
Other items discussed at the meeting included:
- Recapping the success of National Distance Learning Week on Tiger-to-Tiger
- Discussing constitution and bylaws changes to adapt them to better suit the nature of the online organization
- Making plans for another edition of the online newsletter
The next OSGA meeting will be at 11 a.m. on Saturday, December 13. All students are welcome to attend. Email osga@fhsu.edu for the meeting link.