“QM Recognition for Quality in Course Sharing for Teaching Institutions provides confidence to institutions and their stakeholders that students are consistently provided a high quality learning experience.”Dr. Deb Adair, Chief Executive Officer, Quality Matters
Issues with logistics, budget, time, and other resources can pose challenges for your institution’s development of online courses. In these cases, it’s important to remember that there’s another option for providing robust, high-quality online education to your institution’s learners. Course sharing agreements between institutions can be a great way to provide your students with the opportunities they need. But when engaging in such course sharing, how can institutions ensure that their partner institutions meet the highest standard of quality?
To help institutions make better, more informed decisions with regard to course sharing, QM and Acadeum collaborated to help QM roll out a system for assessing a potential partner institution’s quality assurance processes. It’s now simpler to determine whether an institution sharing online courses meets QM’s rigorous standard of quality through official recognition. This recognition is based on 24 course quality standards, largely derived from the QM Higher Education Rubric, and assures that such institutions offer well-designed and supported online courses taught by qualified and prepared instructors.
“QM Recognition for Quality in Course Sharing for Teaching Institutions provides confidence to institutions and their stakeholders that students are consistently provided a high quality learning experience,” says Dr. Deb Adair, Chief Executive Officer for QM.
This new recognition has benefits for institutions on both sides of the course sharing process. Home Institutions (HIs) — or those enrolling their learners in shared courses — get the opportunity to expand their catalogs, potentially even developing new programs. Strategic leveraging of shared courses can also be used to bolster completion and retention efforts. Teaching Institutions (TIs) who offer courses for sharing will earn revenue for offering their courses to learners from other institutions, and the new recognition opens more possibilities for these relationships.
As just one example of the usefulness of this recognition, Acadeum’s website features a filter to distinguish courses from institutions that have received recognition, helping HIs to more easily view and choose between quality courses they can offer their students. QM recently completed a pilot project to evaluate how institutions ensure they meet standards and plans to make this review widely available later this year.
Interested in learning more or having your institution recognized for quality in course sharing? Contact us!
