Using Quality Matters for Online Courses

When offering online courses an organization has to be aware of the quality of those courses. I'm employed at Western Wyoming Community College (WWCC) as an Instructor of Information Technology. Currently, I teach between 4 and 5 online courses each semester. When I started to teach online with the college, there were no guidelines on how you should conduct the course i.e. how to communicate effectively with students, what to do and what not to do. I was lucky because I've been an online student and had prepared for conducting the course ahead of time. At first, most instructors conduct a trial and error with course content and then work the bugs out of their course; I suppose this is with any course. Many of the faculty really had their courses disorganized and it was a challenge for the organization to go back through the courses and make suggestions. A Distance Education committee was organized to come up with a solution for every online faculty. The team decided on "Quality Matters" from the University of Maryland. For more information, check out: www.qualitymatters.org.

It is interesting implementing the "Quality Matters" within an online course and the process to get started. My research process consisted of the following (I'll be submitting a paper to highlight the process).

1. Realizing the need to have guidelines such as "Quality Matters" for my online courses.
2. Signed up for a 3-week online course that covered the concepts of the guidelines. The following items were covered within the course:

• Quality Matters Overview
• Rubric and Annotations
• Rubric Scoring Summary
• What Makes a Useful Recommendation
• Roles and Responsibilities
• Quality Matters Website Resources
• Quality Matters Training to be a Peer Reviewer
• Applying Rubric Standards Scenario
• Guide to 14 Essential Standards

From the above I implemented most of the guidelines for my online course and submitted it to the Blackboard "Greenhouse Program" to review and give me feedback. Then, in the summer I planned to actually submit it to the "Quality Matters" organization to review. I hope to be one of the first to get my course approved for "Quality."

SUBMITTED SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS TO INSTRUCTOR ON 4/11/07

Using Elluminate to Assist Online Students

1. Read literature on the use of Elluminate: http://www.elluminate.com
2. Find resources to help determine how to create demonstrations and recordings: http://www.elluminate.com/support/docs/7.0/server.jsp.
3. Find software/equipment to create video within Elluminate demonstrations: use headphone with microphone and installed web cam.
4. Create a demonstration with and without video: http://sage.wwcc.wy.edu/ - select recordings (month of September 06 and Jan.-Feb. 07).
5. Use Elluminate to assist an online student: http://sage.wwcc.wy.edu/ - select recordings (month of September 06 and Jan.-Feb. 07).
6. Use the recorder to record Elluminate sessions: http://sage.wwcc.wy.edu/ - select recordings (month of September 06 and Jan.-Feb. 07).