Maintaining Quality Online Learning Programs

Creating and sustaining quality online learning experiences has become a top priority across the higher education community and plays a key role in the appeal and competitiveness of an institution. As these online programs are developed and implemented, quality assurance frameworks and processes are essential to ensuring that these programs meet rigorous standards and continue to align with learning objectives.

Using Rubrics to Assess Course Quality
To help ensure learners are engaging with high-quality courses, Quality Matters (QM) is among the most well-known programs for creating a scalable process for quality assurance. The SUNY Online Course Quality Review Rubric (OSCQR) is another well-respected online design rubric, used and developed by SUNY Online, in collaboration with campuses through the SUNY system.

Implementing an Evaluation Cycle
Regardless of the program being used to conduct online course quality review, developing an evaluation cycle is essential to ensuring courses are meeting key standards. In between offerings, institutions should take stock of online courses as a whole and reflect on ways to enhance course content, engagement, and student outcomes. During this assessment, important questions to ask include:

• Does the course learning environment welcome and include all students?
• Is engagement encouraging?
• Are there opportunities for self-reflection and discussion?
• Do activities provide opportunities for realistic, relevant, and meaningful application of knowledge?
• Are students achieving the goals of the course?
• Is the workload reasonable for both students and the instructor?

By adopting a mission to review and update all courses to ensure the highest quality content and experience, that promise can go a long way in improving the brand of an institution and creating a student centric learning environment that attracts positive attention.

Building a Course Assessment System
Any time an institution begins assessing courses, whether it’s from a system level or individual course level, there are often barriers to overcome.