Unit Overview

In this unit we will be working with course quality measures for online courses. Course quality measures are a way to do evaluation on your own course and to hold your work accountable to a certain standard. We will look generally at course quality as an idea and then at some specific tools that can be used to assess course quality in digital courses.

Activities

Using The Quality Matters and other Quality Frameworks
Developing Our Own Measures Of Quality

Objectives

Be familiar with the different types of course evaluation
Understand the basic application of course quality rubrics
Be able to perform a basic quality evaluation on your own course

Readings/Resources

Scharf, P. (2017). The Importance of Course Quality Standards in Online Education
Crews, T., Bordonada, T., & Wilkinson, K. (2017). Student Feedback on Quality Matters Standards for Online Course Design. EDUCAUSE Review. 2017 (6).
Jaggers, S., Xu, D. (2013). Predicting Online Student Outcomes From a Measure of Course Quality. CCRC Working Paper 57, Columbia University.

Course Quality Standards

Course quality standards provide a benchmark for a course, program or institution to think about quality in their online or hybrid courses. When adopted they help to develop a shared vision for what is a level of course quality that all members of the community strive for and agree is, at the very least, a base level of quality. Some institutions subscribe to course quality standards at the institution level and evaluate all courses based on the standard. At MSU we provide access to several course quality rubrics as guides, but allow for flexibility at the program and department levels to decide what is best for the unit in terms of quality measures. For the purposes of this course I have provided access to the Quality Matters materials, OLC Scorecard, and the Illinois Online Network (ION) Quality Online Course rubric. There are a large number of other rubrics available, as well as many articles on how others have worked to develop their own quality rubrics (see Jaggers article above).

Evaluating Your Course

You may wish to evaluate your course using one or more of the rubrics linked above, or you may wish to develop your own standards for quality. Either way, the process of evaluating your course can be done alone (MSU’s subscription to Quality Matters provides a digital version of their rubric designed for self evaluation) or with a group of peers. Engaging a group of peers to work with you through a quality evaluation can help strengthen your work with your course and can provide opportunities for conversation, brainstorming, and feedback.

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