Objective Questions: What have you learned about the importance of following quality guidelines when developing an online course? What potential exists if you don’t use a set of quality guidelines?
What I have learned is that quality guidelines have developed greatly since my early days as a student and have undoubtedly been important in improving the quality of education. I certainly had the experience as a high school and university student of being unsure what the learning objectives of a course were, not knowing exactly how I was going to be assessed, or sitting down to write a final exam that tested content not covered in the course, and this seems to have been a fairly common experience. The quality guidelines that are now in place in most educational institutions would undoubtedly prevent these types of problems from happening.
In quality online courses, planning and course design need to be intentional rather than haphazard, driven by desired learning outcomes. The materials, learning activities and assignments need to be selected and sequenced to help learners achieve these objectives and the assessment should evaluate whether or not the student has successfully reached the intended destination. Quality guidelines can provide instructors and course designers with a systematic and rational way to ensure all of this happens.
Quality assurance processes are perhaps even more important in online courses than in in-person ones. In face-to-face contexts, the instructor can more easily adapt, adjust and pivot if they realize it’s necessary. In online courses, there must be more thought put into planning because instructors may not be able to gauge level of engagement or understanding as easily in online learning environments. The course will need to be designed to work for all of the potential learners on the course and problems will need to be anticipated and dealt with in the planning phase of the course, before enrolment even begins. Quality guidelines provide a systematic way of evaluating a course that has already been planned, but can also be during the planning process to guide it.
By following quality guidelines such as those of Quality Matters and UBC (Sharif), instructors can also improve the learner experience. They do this by making sure the course is easy to navigate and course elements like the assessment criteria are easy to find, helping with transparency in assessment. The guidelines should also lead to students being able to orient themselves at the beginning of the course, giving an overview of the course and how it is structured. Students are more likely to be engaged if they understand how what they’re studying fits with the course objectives. If they cause course planners to think carefully about the selection of technology they may also reduce student frustrations with the technology.
Not following quality guidelines in the planning phase of a course could lead to a number of problems. For example, there might be a lack of alignment between the different elements of a course, which may cause learners to disengage if they feel that materials or tasks are not relevant to the learning objectives, or that assessments do not reflect the work they’ve done in the course. An example given by Dawson is a course in which the materials and interactions in a course promote critical thinking skills, but the final exam evaluates students’ ability to give definitions of terms (Dawson, 2012). If the exam is heavily weighted, the result may be that students do not do all of the coursework.
Another issue that may arise if quality guidelines are not followed is that it could be demotivating for learners. If the course is difficult to navigate, if the technology is unreliable or difficult to use, if tests do not reflect the content or the skills developed through the coursework, or do not align with the stated learning outcomes of the course, students are likely to become frustrated or lose confidence in the value of the course.
How can you ensure that your online course meets the needs of your learners when developing your own quality checklist?
How I will ensure that the online course meets the needs of the learners will depend on the context in which I next teach. In the past, I have considered many of the common items on quality assurance checklists but in an informal way, without actually having a checklist. I will definitely be more deliberate in the future, finding a checklist that suits my teaching context or adapting one if necessary. It is likely to be a little more streamlined. I would anticipate that my course would have smaller groups to teach and that quite a lot of the teaching will be in the form of synchronous class meetings, so I think I’ll have more scope for tailoring the course to the learners as I go. Of course if I teach in a college or university language program, there will undoubtedly already be a quality rubric of some kind in place.
Reflective Questions: How does this fit with your experience? What successes and/or frustrations have you experienced in your e-learning that may have been attributed to following (or not following) quality guidelines?
My experience with online learning is quite limited—I’ve taken (or at least started) a few MOOCs. Apart from that, EDUC 4150 is the only other online course I’ve taken. My experience in EDUC 4150 has been very positive. While reading through the quality checklists that I’ve looked at, such as the one from UBC, (Sharif), I can see that this course ‘ticks all the boxes’ of the checklists quite well. For example, it is easy to navigate and work through and I was able to figure out how to get started quite quickly. Considering that this is the first time I’ve experienced a course that is presented on Moodle or any LMS, I think this is very positive.
Interpretive Questions: What does this new learning mean to you? What new insights do you now have? How has your thinking changed because of this learning?
In some of my teaching / training experiences, I have, or have had, little control over the course design or assessment instruments, which can be frustrating. Sometimes I’ve been forced to teach using materials not suited to the learners, not relevant or interesting to them. I also taught at in a teacher training program where I couldn’t create the final test myself, but worse, I found it challenging even to find out what was on this test, which now makes me cringe. One of my insights is that quality guidelines would have gone a long way to alleviating or preventing these problems.
My recent years of teaching have usually been the opposite sort of situation--I’ve had free rein when it comes to planning courses and this was done in a fairly informal way. It was important to me to feel like I was providing stimulating materials, teaching activities and learning activities. I was rarely asked to show my plans for the course to the institution—as long as the student evaluations and feedback were positive, they were happy. This kind of flexibility allows for more customization of the learning experience depending on the personalities, interests and abilities of the people in the class. However, in future, I would like to do this in a somewhat more formalized way. I think following quality checklist of some kind not only would ensure quality but also might take less energy in the planning process.
Decisional Questions: How can this new learning be applied in your online courses?
Although I am not teaching at the moment, I think what I’ve learned about quality assurance will help me make decisions in planning future courses regardless of whether they are in-person, online or blended. I hope to be more intentional about planning, doing more long-term planning rather than planning as the course proceeds and feel better equipped to decide what quality guidelines are important for the courses and learners that I’m teaching. Depending on the teaching context, I’ll also decide how formal or informal the process needs to be.
References
As a Faculty Member, What Do I Need To Know About Quality in Online Learning? | teachonline.ca. (2014, March 25). Teachonline.Ca. https://teachonline.ca/tools-trends/quality-guidelines-and-practice/faculty-member-what-do-i-need-know-about-quality-online-learning
Centre for Effective Teaching and Learning. (N.D.). Quality Online Learning and Teaching (QOLT) Rubric Summary. Cal State, LA. Retrieved on December 13, 2020 from https://www.calstatela.edu/sites/default/files/groups/Center%20for%20Effective%20Teaching%20and%20Learning/pdf/qolt_rubric_updated102418.pdf
Dawson, P. (2012, October 10). Constructive alignment and learning outcomes. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Xs4WLm0uC2k
Quality Matters. (2018). HE Specific Review Standards from the QM Higher Education Rubric, Sixth Edition. MarylandOnline, Inc. Retrieved on December 13, 2020 from https://www.qualitymatters.org/sites/default/files/PDFs/StandardsfromtheQMHigherEducationRubric.pdf
Sharif, A. (N.D.). Online/Blended Learning Course Quality Checklist. University of British Columbia. Retrieved on December 13, 2020 from https://wiki.ubc.ca/images/1/1b/OnlineQualityCheckList_SiteJuly27.pdf
Simunich, B., Voelker, C., & Scheffler, S. (2020, May 7). Building on remote instruction successes: A roadmap to quality. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/RSQNk4Rf09c
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