CourseMatch Program

Courses offered 100% online in synchronous, asynchronous, or bichronous delivery modes all fall under Assembly Bill 386. They are referred to as AB386, also the name of the attribute value used to code eligible courses. Participation is not voluntary. Departments and/or individual faculty offering online courses cannot exclude courses from the listing. Campuses may use discretion to exclude internship, thesis, and capstone courses. Enrollment in online courses is on a space available basis during dates set by the host campus. Host student enrollment counts are included in FTES calculations.

CourseMatch, which was first offered in 2014, is a subset of CSU Fully Online courses that are “sponsored” by the Chancellor’s Office. Prior to each enrollment cycle the CO sends a request for proposals with details on requirements for participation. For approved proposals, campuses agree to reserve a minimum of 10 seats for host students and open enrollment on a date set by the Chancellor's Office. Only asynchronous GE or high demand major/non-GE courses are considered. Because the CO provides funding to reserve capacity in CourseMatch courses, the host student enrollments are not counted towards FTES calculations.

All courses offered in a fully online delivery mode are included in CSU Fully Online. Campuses are responsible for identifying and coding online courses to ensure courses appear on the schedule and in the enrollment portal. GE and high demand major/non-GE courses may be eligible for inclusion in CourseMatch.

Campuses designate a staff or administrator who is responsible for working with faculty to collect submissions and required information to complete and submit the CourseMatch Candidate Form. The approval workflow will notify the submitter when courses have been approved. The workflow approval will include the campus designated approvers required in advance of publishing courses.

The best action is to have the courses articulated at other CSU campuses so when students search the schedule, they can clearly see up front how the course transfers back to their campus. Courses with direct equivalency information on file are easily searchable. For courses that might not have a direct equivalency but are approved for blanket substitutions or major elective credit, the Public Notes section can be used to display approval information under course details.

Students access CSU Fully Online Course enrollment via the Enroll in CSU Fully Online link in their student Self-Service portal. The link is available during a defined period of time with several campuses closing access once the semester starts. A student’s eligibility will be automatically determined upon accessing the enrollment term through the link. The student is able to search available courses and select one to submit an enrollment request. The host campus receives the request, processes, and the enrollment status is updated in the portal.

As specified on page 12, section 3.3 of the CMS CourseMatch BPG, CourseMatch courses must be labeled with the appropriate Course Attributes to allow the courses to be included in the Systemwide Schedule of Classes, as well as for reporting purposes. Attributes and attribute values need to be entered for each eligible CSU Fully Online class. The FONL Attribute and AB386 and CM Attribute Values will be used to identify classes that will be loaded into the CSU Fully Online Global Database Class Schedule.

WUE students pay 150% of resident tuition that is calculated and collected at the Home campus. WUE students should not be subject to nonresident tuition at the Host campus even if the campus does not participate in the WUE program. Campuses should update their Non Resident Fee Triggers to waive Non Resident Fees for all tuition exceptions even if the campus does not recognize the exception locally. WUE students have their own residency exception value of "W", which would need to be included as a Non Resident Fee Trigger for those campuses who do not already have it set up.

The CSU Fully Online Courses program is for matriculated students residing in California and enrolled in state-supported programs that have earned credit and are in good standing at their home campuses in the California State University. Any non-resident students physically living in California and attending regular classes in California can take an online course through another CSU campus.

However, any campus enrolling students that reside in other states in online courses and programs must be in compliance with specific state authorization rules for the student’s home state. If the student’s admission to a CSU in a fully online program or course is compliant with the authorization requirement, then there is NO additional documentation needed for the student to take a course at another CSU campus through CSU Fully Online Courses. These online courses and grades will be transferred back to the authorized home campus and will be treated as credit in residence for the degree.

Please be advised that state regulations change without notice and campuses are expected to be in compliance. If there is any doubt about a non-resident student’s opportunity to enroll in online courses at other CSU campuses, then it would be appropriate to utilize a “deny” service indicator until the eligibility question is resolved.

Concurrently enrolled students pay CSU tuition fees and campus fees to the home campus based upon the total number of units for which he/she is or plans to be registered. Home campus non-resident tuition fees, as appropriate, are paid at the same time and entry made with the fee certification. Non-resident tuition fees and course/lab fees for enrollment at the host campus are the only fee types which may be collected by the host campus for CSU Fully Online Courses students. These fees should be paid directly to the host campus at the time of enrollment.

One of the qualifications to participate in CSU Fully Online Courses is for tuition-fees to be paid at the home campus. Payment may include deferment for financial aid disbursement. In this way, there will be no ambiguity about whether or not fees have been collected. The host campus will simply not be burdened with the responsibility of collecting this important tuition-fee. In fact, confirmation of prior fee payment has always been part of the intrasystem concurrent enrollment procedure. This confirmation will ensure a student commitment to stay enrolled and will reduce the refund burden to one campus should students fully withdraw. As it is, qualified students whose full-time tuition-fees are covered by financial aid may pursue enrollment in a course at another campus without interruption by CSU Fully Online Courses. Even though the home campus may provide a payment window between enrollment and collection for their own students, students must actually pay these tuition-fees prior to launching a CSU Fully Online Courses request. As soon as the tuition-fees are paid, the student will be able to process a request.

While tuition-fees would already be paid at the home campus, international and non-resident students participating in CSU Fully Online Courses would be responsible for paying the additional “per unit charge” at the host campus. When it is due, failure to pay this additional charge may result in disenrollment at the host campus.

Yes, but there are accounting issues here. The home campus should enroll the student in a placeholder course whenever a student enrolls through CSU Fully Online Courses. This course alerts financial aid about the enrollment elsewhere, and it will serve to prevent the release of an automatic refund for students who pay for more units than they are undertaking at the home campus. The course is removed from the term, so campuses should utilize the “equation” feature of the system to account for collected fees greater than the home campus units would ordinarily permit.

Students may be charged specific course-related fees such as lab fees or activity fees. However, they may not be charged general fees such as student success fees or general instruction related fees. More than likely these kind of fees or their variants have already been collected at the home campus.

The following codes and values must be utilized by the host campus in enrolling and reporting students participating in the CSU Fully Online process at the term census date and at end-of-term.

Admission Basis Code = K (Concurrent enrollees – Coded Memo SA 74-17)
Enrollment Status Code = 6 (Transitory Undergraduates)

Institution of Origin Code = 6 digits, see COSAR Table 4, 3rd position is Institution Type = 6 (California State University) Campuses must properly identify all asynchronous online course sections as usual in the Academic Planning and Data Base (APDB) census file which must be consistent with the ERSS census file, as well as other required APDB course section information.

Financial aid is available only through the home campus and student’s eligible for veteran’s, rehabilitation, social security and other federal, state or county benefits must secure eligibility certification through the home campus. The Financial Aid Office at the home campus must manually enter the additional units taken at a host campus. Evidence of enrollment at the host campus may be required in order to receive full payment of aid. If concurrent units exceed aid eligibility, a manual process to disburse additional aid at the correct amount will likely be required.

The set of CSU Fully Online courses are intended for continuing undergraduate students in good academic standing. In addition to being in good academic standing, continuing students must also have paid their full-time tuition-fees or be covered by financial aid at their home campuses. All of these requirements are stipulated in Title 5.

An undergraduate student is eligible to enroll in CSU Fully Online Courses if they meet the following conditions:

1. Student has completed at least one term at the home campus as a matriculated student and earned at least 12 units at the home campus. First-term transfers are exempt.
2. Student has attained a grade point average of 2.0 in all work completed at the home campus and is in good standing at that campus. Campuses can set graduate student minimum GPA.
3. Student will be/is enrolled at home campus during the period of concurrent enrollment at host campus and has paid tuition fees as a full-time student.

The eligibility determinations are made entirely by means of a CMS-delivered modification at each home campus.

The specific determinants are not passed to the global database. Instead, once determined eligible, the significant bio-demo and course completion information is passed to the global database at the time students submit a request for enrollment at a host campus. If the enrollment request is accepted then the student may not enroll in another online course unless the home campus authorizes additional courses. If the enrollment request is not accepted then

the student would be eligible to select other on-line courses.

Students make changes to their schedules. Whether they drop their home campus course(s) or the CSU Fully Online course, there are no issues dropping below full-time as long as student is charged the correct tuition for total units enrolled. The student is responsible for charges that result from recalculated tuition and financial aid.

There is no automated way to check pre-requisites. Completed course information is supplied to host campuses via the global database based upon the self-reporting of the student. If pre-requisites are enforced, information about prior course completion will be available to registrars at the host campuses for their consideration. Campuses can pause enrollment processing to review prerequisites and clear for enrollment.

Class Level information will not be supplied through the global database. In order to accommodate students, host campus registrars will have access to a series of override options that can be utilized as circumstances arise.

AB386 courses as well as Course Match courses are posted as transfer credit at the home campuses when the grades are returned either electronically or through official transcripts. As the issue may arise occasionally in conducting a graduation check, please note these completed credits do fulfill the units needed to satisfy “units in residence” for the degree. Most students fulfill the units in residence by virtue of the work completed at the home campus. If units are needed to meet minimum in residence units for the degree, the campus will need to adjust the total units based on the CSU Fully Online course units.

Grades earned from CSU Fully Online Courses should NOT count toward resident GPA. The courses are coming in as transfer credit and the student received the benefits of that credit e.g. repeats, resident credit toward graduation but it should not get calculated toward resident GPA.

While the articulation of courses has been a long-standing requirement between community colleges and the CSU, there is limited information available about how courses at one CSU campus articulate with another one. Campuses will use the TES program to store GE, other requirement, and course equivalency articulations for online courses. The course schedule pulls in the articulation information to display to users when using the public facing site www.csufullyonline.com.

Online Courses will continue to be listed for summer through Cal State Online. As summer is generally offered through self-support, enrollment is done by the student directly with the host campus outside of the intrasystem process. Students would pay per-unit tuition to the host campus, would not be eligible for financial aid, and would be responsible for sending transcripts upon completion.