Creating and sustaining quality online learning experiences has become a top priority across the higher education community and plays a key role in the appeal and competitiveness of an institution. As these online programs are developed and implemented, quality assurance frameworks and processes are essential to ensuring that these programs meet rigorous standards and continue to align with learning objectives. “Having standards that everyone from across an institution has to meet is of paramount importance in higher education,” says Joshua Gaul, Associate Vice President & Chief Digital Learning Officer. “The lack of standards in today’s higher education system is a top reason for the drop in retention and enrollment, especially among community colleges and small private schools. Every organization should ensure their course offerings and entire digital presence meet quality industry standards, including ADA compliance.”
Using Rubrics to Assess Course Quality
To help ensure learners are engaging with high-quality courses, Quality Matters (QM) is among the most well-known programs for creating a scalable process for quality assurance. “QM is a global organization leading quality assurance in online and digital teaching and learning and is used to impact the quality of teaching and learning at a state and national level,” says Gaul. “QM has eight general standards and 42 total standards. More than 1,500 colleges and universities have joined the Quality Matters community and they’ve certified thousands of online and hybrid courses, as well as trained over 60,000 education professionals, including myself, on online course design standards.”
The SUNY Online Course Quality Review Rubric (OSCQR) is another well-respected online design rubric, used and developed by SUNY Online, in collaboration with campuses through the SUNY system. “With six general standards and 50 total standards, the QSCQR is openly licensed for anyone to use and adopt and aims to support continuous improvements and quality accessibility in online courses,” explains Gaul. “The rubric and the online course review and refresh process support large scale online course design efforts systematically and consistently. The goal is to ensure that all online courses meet a quality instructional design and accessibility standard, and are regularly and systematically reviewed, refreshed, and improved to reflect campus guidelines and research based online effective practices.”
“In addition to QM and OSCQR, there are many other rubrics being used to systematically check courses against,” continues Gaul. “No matter which rubric you are using, it’s important to have accountability and a knowledge sharing process about these standards across the entire institution.”
Implementing an Evaluation Cycle
Regardless of the program being used to conduct online course quality review, developing an evaluation cycle is essential to ensuring courses are meeting key standards. “The first step in implementing an evaluation cycle is gathering data and understanding the trends of your organization,” says Gaul. “What is the enrollment frequency, what courses have high enrollment, how many students fail or drop out? In classes that have very low enrollment or high drop rates, what are their barriers to success? Institutions should review the disciplines and courses with the highest enrollment and which courses should be evaluated and revised on a more frequent basis. Looking at the data closely can provide valuable insight into the effectiveness and quality of each online course.”
In between offerings, institutions should take stock of online courses as a whole and reflect on ways to enhance course content, engagement, and student outcomes. During this assessment, important questions to ask include:
- Does the course learning environment welcome and include all students?
- Is engagement encouraging?
- Are there opportunities for self-reflection and discussion?
- Do activities provide opportunities for realistic, relevant, and meaningful application of knowledge?
- Are students achieving the goals of the course?
- Is the workload reasonable for both students and the instructor?
By adopting a mission to review and update all courses to ensure the highest quality content and experience, that promise can go a long way in improving the brand of an institution and creating a student centric learning environment that attracts positive attention. To successfully create an evaluation cycle, Gaul says each institution needs a defined project management process. “Each organization should map out a review process that defines individual roles and responsibilities. This should involve instructional designers, librarians, IT services, student support, and academic support. This process should not fall solely on the instructor. If you think of it like building a house, the faculty member is the homeowner, the instructional designer is the general contractor, and IT is your plumbing and electrical. Every person needs to be involved in the planning from day one to ensure a successful build.”
Building a Course Assessment System
Any time an institution begins assessing courses, whether it’s from a system level or individual course level, there are often barriers to overcome. “When technology is involved in instruction, there should be a collaborative effort to identify and overcome any hurdles,” says Gaul. “Technology should never lead the academia; the teaching should lead the technology. We must remember that all students are cognitively different, and this is why Universal Design for Learning (UDL) leans towards accessibility and flexibility and removing barriers to learning. These barriers can include inadequate support, where students do not know where to go for help, whether that’s technical, tutoring, writing style, etc. Access to support must be built into the course in order for students to feel supported and demonstrate emotional intelligence within the class.”
Other common barriers include a lack of a learning community and boredom. Without students feeling connected to the instructor and other classmates, they can become isolated, and without interesting content and delivery, students can feel disengaged. “System barriers we regularly see in regards to course assessments involve implementation,” says Gaul. “Lack of commitment, poor preparation, and inconsistency can all affect the success of a course assessment. Unless there’s some sort of checks and balances, courses are going to be inconsistent, and students are going to have difficulty moving seamlessly between classes if they’re taking more than one online course. The purpose of building a course assessment system is to free up faculty and give them the proper support they need to be successful.”
“Whether a course is fully online, hybrid, HyFlex, or in-person, we can help make sure it meets all the standards of quality technology enhanced instruction. This can provide a level of risk management and quality control that can often get ignored when there’s too much focus on the tools, system recruitment, and retention. Member institutions can also count on web and educational technology support. Edge provides technology and web support service management frameworks and ticketing systems to help with website maintenance and web content management. Most importantly, we can help provide thought leadership in how to implement a systemwide course assessment and revision cycle.”
— Joshua Gaul
Associate Vice President & Chief Digital Learning Officer, Edge
Instructional Design Support
Designing and managing online courses can be a challenging task, especially without the resources and training to do so effectively. Well-versed in instructional design, the Edge team understands digitally-enabled learning environments and how to evaluate online courses against standard industry rubrics. “Edge understands the methodologies, rubrics, and standards that go into the creation of a high quality curriculum,” says Gaul. “We have worked with colleges and universities to conduct evaluations and identify trends we see in their courses. We can also build workshops to help train faculty and students and improve their understanding of why online instruction is different from traditional classroom learning. Specifically, we help prepare staff and students for the challenge of online education through engaging student-centered experiences built to encourage online presence and encouraging active learning methodologies.”
Edge’s course and curriculum evaluation services are designed to help an institution deliver a top-quality product. “Whether a course is fully online, hybrid, HyFlex, or in-person, we can help make sure it meets all the standards of quality technology enhanced instruction,” says Gaul. “This can provide a level of risk management and quality control that can often get ignored when there’s too much focus on the tools, system recruitment, and retention. Member institutions can also count on web and educational technology support. Edge provides technology and web support service management frameworks and ticketing systems to help with website maintenance and web content management. Most importantly, we can help provide thought leadership in how to implement a systemwide course assessment and revision cycle.”
“Our team of experts can help an organization bridge the gap between technology and academia and lead a collaborative effort as opposed to two silos working in competition,” continues Gaul. “We can customize for smaller niche projects, support larger, longer-term initiatives, or become an extension of your team. Edge can provide documentation used in the project and whatever we produce will be owned by the institution, whether it’s a learning object or a series of training modules.”
Gaul says if online courses are not being reviewed and revised regularly, those learning experiences will not make an impact. “Revision cycles that are high quality, trust the data, and have accountability and responsibility are incredibly important to ensuring course content is engaging and impactful. Every institution should look at how their offices work together to create a course evaluation and revision cycle that is beneficial and supportive to the student. As you look for ways to improve your institution, Edge wants to help you transform your instruction, advance your online education, and find powerful ways to improve the way you do business.”
To learn more about optimizing courses for online learning and transforming the student experience, visit njedge.net/solutions-overview/digital-learning.
