Valpo’s First Quality Matters Certified Course

By Tiffany Kolba, Mathematics & Statistics

When I first heard that Valpo planned to require online summer courses to achieve Quality Matters (QM) certification (as part of an HLC initiative), I was immediately wary and skeptical. I was concerned that the QM certification process would be very time consuming with little added value, and I worried that it might infringe upon faculty members’ academic freedom to design and teach their courses as they best see fit. However, the Department of Mathematics and Statistics was able to designate some of our restricted funds to compensate faculty for achieving QM certification, so I decided to go forward with the QM process.

I attended the full-day “Applying the Quality Matters Rubric” workshop on campus during fall break in October 2024. I was surprised that many elements of the workshop focused on how to serve as a QM reviewer of a course, rather than focusing on how to get your own course QM certified. But I found the explanations of the rubric helpful, and it was beneficial to talk to the other workshop participants about their plans for their online summer courses. After the workshop, I was able to follow up with CITAL to obtain exemptions from QM certification for MATH 110, MATH 111, and MATH 115, which are one-credit self-paced courses that primarily use ALEKS software for the course content. I was appreciative that the University administration understood that QM certification does not make sense for all course types. 

Next, I focused on preparing my STAT 340: Statistics for Decision Making course to undergo an official QM review. My personal approach to preparing for a QM review was to first just set up my class in Canvas the way I typically would do. I then looked through the QM rubric to see which elements my course was missing. The two key elements that I found missing were unit-level learning objectives and a course map. I have always had course-level learning objectives, but I had never previously written unit-level objectives. My STAT 340 course contains 13 topics, with 13 corresponding homework assignments. Hence, I designated each topic as a “unit” for the sake of the QM review. 

To create my unit-level learning objectives, I simply looked through each of my homework assignments and wrote up 3-5 bullet points that described what the homework assignments were asking the students to do. Since I have taught STAT 340 numerous times and my homework assignments had already been repeatedly refined, the unit-level learning objectives were actually very quick to write up. My course map was also fairly straightforward to develop since my course was already organized with learning materials and a homework assignment for each topic, as well as exams that covered groups of topics.

My STAT 340 course was officially submitted for QM review in September 2025. The review committee consisted of two staff members from Valpo’s CITAL, as well as one external faculty member who had expertise in the content area of my course. A different Valpo CITAL staff member served as the QM coordinator, who helped with logistics, such as giving the QM review committee access to my Canvas course. After approximately four weeks, I received the decision from the QM review. The initial decision was “Not Met.”

The QM rubric contains 44 standards, 22 of which are designated as “essential.” In order to achieve QM certification, you must meet all 22 essential standards and have a total score of at least 85%. My course initially failed to meet four of the essential standards and had a total score of 79%. At first, I was discouraged because the review was harsher than I expected and it seemed like it would require significant time and effort to revise my course to meet the standards that had initially failed to meet. However, after further examination of the QM review feedback and talking with CITAL, I developed a plan to fairly easily address most of the standards that were initially not met. 

The most difficult standard to address was the essential standard that “The text in the course is accessible.” I did not want to have to completely redo all of my learning materials for the course. After exploring many possible options, the CITAL staff member who served as the QM coordinator took the initiative to go through all of my PDF documents and manually add accessibility tags. Although QM gives you up to 14 weeks to submit amendments, I was able to submit my amendments within four weeks of the initial decision. My amendments were approved after only one day and my course received official QM certification in November 2025.

Overall, I do think my online STAT 340 course now provides a higher quality learning experience for the students after going through the QM certification process. In particular, I think the communication guidelines and course navigation tips (which were added in my amendment process) are helpful for the students, and the unit-level objectives and course map help to better indicate to the students the importance and purpose of each assessment. The time commitment was less than I initially feared, especially since I had taught the course many times before and because I received lots of support from the CITAL staff. 

For other faculty considering QM certification, I would definitely recommend undergoing the QM process only for a course you have already taught. And I highly recommend consulting with the CITAL staff, who can provide excellent support in meeting the QM standards.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Tiffany’s course is the first Valpo course to receive QM certification. This means that students and parents who are looking for a summer class can choose to search only for QM-certified courses and Tiffany’s course will be among them.Here is the link: Courses Currently QM-Certified.