A Closer Look at the Quality Matters Standards

A group of online instructors recently completed a Digital Union online workshop in which they walked through the Quality Matters standards for online and hybrid course design one by one, measuring their own online and hybrid courses against the 40 standards on the Quality Matters rubric.  The participants either currently teach an online or hybrid course or they are developing one.  They registered for this four-week online workshop because they want to create the highest quality online educational experience possible for their students and for themselves.

It was my privilege to facilitate the workshop for this extraordinary group of instructors whose collective knowledge and online experience exceed my own.  In my role as facilitator, I learned from them and found their observations about effective online course design fascinating and instructive.

I would like to share some remarks from the instructors who completed the workshop.

It really added so much to my knowledge about how to build a course which can make the life of my students easier.

Tamer Hamza
Visiting Professor
Division of Restorative and Prosthetic Dentistry

I found the Quality Matters online course to be highly beneficial, and would recommend that online faculty devote some valuable time to taking it for several reasons:

• I have facilitated online courses for years, but have very rarely been in the role of student. Being a student in an online course – specifically a Carmen course – was enlightening in and of itself and gave me new insights into how to better design my online courses.
• Being in a community of faculty course designers is helpful. In our discussion board conversations, fellow faculty members/students discussed their own experiences with and best practices in online courses, and I’m sure everyone left those discussions with a few new ideas for their own course design.
• For those who are beginning to design their own courses, this course is a must – but even those who have been teaching online for years should find the QM rubric useful. I have to admit that I initially found some of the QM requirements slightly redundant and perhaps unnecessary – but when presented and discussed in the course of this online class, the need for these requirements became more clear to me, and I have a new understanding of and appreciation for them. I will definitely integrate all of the QM requirements into my online courses.

Marie Mika
Lecturer
Sociology

• It was very informative and supportive to have a place to discuss online teaching strategies with others who also currently do so.  It is difficult to do at OSU because there is no real organization, group, department or office that holds all those who teach online together or has a strong presence or that acts as a real advocate for us.
• The Quality Matters rubric is fairly helpful on its own, but the detailed version, the examples you provided in this workshop, and the comments of others taking the workshop, really helped me to see how to put those standards into practice in an actual course.
• This workshop also helped push me to make sure that I am keeping my objectives, learning activities, and assessments aligned as the course evolves over the quarters.  The activities in this workshop helped get me started on this.

Jesse D. Fuhrman
Ph.D. Student/Graduate Teaching Associate
Department of Anthropology

The one thing that I found to be the best part of the course was the detailed explanation of each QM standard and how it was stated in terms I could understand! I also like how the rubric allows for you to easily build an online course rather than starting with no guidelines to follow.

Sarah Ellis-Williams
Lecturer
Department of Plant Pathology

Having completed the Quality Matters course, I have a better understanding of how the demands of teaching an online course differ from those of teaching face-to-face. In an online course, every aspect of the course needs to be clearly spelled out in writing and logically sequenced to make sure students understand how to proceed and do well. Dividing an online course into modules can be especially helpful. The Quality Matters rubric also highlights the requisite features of any well-designed course, especially the need to make sure that course objectives, assessments, and learning activities are properly aligned.

Bradley R.H. Bethel
Reading and Writing Secialist
Student-Athlete Support Services Office