{"id":3803,"date":"2023-11-10T13:25:36","date_gmt":"2023-11-10T19:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/cital\/?p=3803"},"modified":"2023-11-10T13:25:36","modified_gmt":"2023-11-10T19:25:36","slug":"why-quality-matters-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intra.valpo.edu\/cital\/why-quality-matters-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Quality Matters Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We all know that enrollment in traditional in-person university classes has declined across the country. But did you know that there has been a corresponding increase<\/em> in enrollment in online and hybrid courses?\u00a0 Despite this growing demand, many faculty have little or no experience designing online and hybrid courses<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is where Valpo\u2019s partnership with Quality Matters<\/em> comes in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You may have heard that Valpo has chosen Quality Matters <\/em>as our required reaccreditation project with the Higher Learning Commission. But what is Quality Matters<\/em> and why are we partnering with them?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quality Matters<\/em> was created in 2003 by a small group of faculty who wanted to design high-quality online courses. With the help of a grant from the U.S. Department of Education,\u00a0these faculty created a rubric with eight course design standards<\/a> based on the best current educational research. They also developed a rigorous peer-review process to support faculty in evaluating their courses against these standards. Since then, more than 1500 colleges and universities throughout the world have joined the QM<\/em> community and used their rubric to improve course design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was introduced to this rubric in a one-day online course Applying the QM Rubric<\/a>.  As I learned about the standards in the rubric, some seemed to be just \u201cbest practices\u201d for any course, such as communicating the purpose and structure of the course to students. Others, such as \u201cthe self-introduction by the instructor is welcoming and is available in the course site\u201d simply translated my in-person self introduction to an online one. I have never made an online welcome video, but I will get some practice next semester when I teach my first for-credit online course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, some of the standards were new to me, as I suspect they will be to other faculty.  In particular, the standards around accessibility proved that I have a long way to go in this regard. For example, any text in an online course should be readable by a screen reader<\/a>.  Moreover, images must also be accessible if they matter for the course. I never knew that you could click on an online image to find out if it has embedded text that describes the image for the visually impaired. Try it with one of the images in this newsletter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Probably the biggest overall takeaway for me from this QM training was about alignment. This is simply the idea that we need to make clear to our students how our assessments, assignments, and class activities align with our stated course goals. Even for in-person classes students need to know why we are doing something, because knowing how this activity connects to the course goals helps them see that it is not just busy work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Valpo moves forward with our Quality Matters <\/em>initiative I know that I and others might be somewhat intimidated by the level of detail in the rubric–just as our students no doubt can be intimidated by rubrics that we create.  But I do know that meeting these standards will provide our students with an outstanding online experience that matches the excellence of our best in-person classes. So I look forward to learning more about Quality Matters<\/em> in the company of all of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In case you want to read more about QM<\/em>, here are three short articles. QM<\/em> also has a complete  library of research articles<\/a> on its website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.This article<\/a> summarizes some of the research about the practical application of the QM rubric.  It lists 16 reference articles about QM<\/em> and about best practices in online education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. In this 2016 report<\/a>, Florida International University, which had the second highest number of QM-certified courses in the nation, did its own study of student perceptions of their learning experience in both QM-certified courses and those without QM certification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. In this study<\/a> a team of researchers examined the student response to a single large online course that was designed using the QM standards. According to the researchers \u201cits findings offer both validation for using QM standards as a basis for course design and tips on improving specific areas, such as accessibility and usability.\u201d This article also lists 17 other articles on best practices in online courses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development We all know that enrollment in traditional in-person university classes has declined across the country. But did you know that there has been a corresponding increase in enrollment in online and hybrid courses?\u00a0 Despite this growing demand, many faculty have little or no experience designing online and hybrid…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[59,99,102,112,121,125,136,141],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-3803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-38","tag-assessment","tag-hybrid-classes","tag-instructional-design","tag-online-classes","tag-quality-matters","tag-rubrics","tag-student-success","tag-teacher-effectiveness"],"author_meta":{"display_name":"kim.pomeroy@valpo.edu","author_link":"https:\/\/intra.valpo.edu\/cital\/author\/kim-pomeroyvalpo-edu\/"},"featured_img":null,"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"Profile":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"kim.pomeroy@valpo.edu","author_link":"https:\/\/intra.valpo.edu\/cital\/author\/kim-pomeroyvalpo-edu\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development We all know that enrollment in traditional in-person university classes has declined across the country. But did you know that there has been a corresponding increase in enrollment in online and hybrid courses?\u00a0 Despite this growing demand, many faculty have little or no experience designing online and hybrid…","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["2023<\/a>"],"unlinked":["2023<\/span>"]},"tags":{"linked":["assessment<\/a>","hybrid classes<\/a>","instructional design<\/a>","online classes<\/a>","Quality Matters<\/a>","rubrics<\/a>","student success<\/a>","teacher effectiveness<\/a>"],"unlinked":["assessment<\/span>","hybrid classes<\/span>","instructional design<\/span>","online classes<\/span>","Quality Matters<\/span>","rubrics<\/span>","student success<\/span>","teacher effectiveness<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 2 years ago","modified":"Updated 2 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on November 10, 2023","modified":"Updated on November 10, 2023"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on November 10, 2023 1:25 pm","modified":"Updated on November 10, 2023 1:25 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/intra.valpo.edu\/cital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/intra.valpo.edu\/cital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/intra.valpo.edu\/cital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intra.valpo.edu\/cital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intra.valpo.edu\/cital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/intra.valpo.edu\/cital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/intra.valpo.edu\/cital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intra.valpo.edu\/cital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intra.valpo.edu\/cital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3803"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intra.valpo.edu\/cital\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=3803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}