Sharing your QM experience with others is a great way to showcase your commitment to quality assurance in online education. Through presentations at non-QM conferences and events, you can demonstrate how you are delivering on your online promise and how the QM quality assurance system for online learning aids your work to provide quality learning experiences.
QM Member and Research Colleague, Bethany Simunich, Ph.D., Director, Online Pedagogy and Research at Kent State Online, often shares about her experience with Quality Matters at non-QM events.
“Being able to discuss Quality Matters at non-QM events, such as national conferences, is crucial. Thankfully, QM is incredibly helpful in providing guidance on how to navigate "member-only" information versus public information. For example, the non-annotated Standards are publicly available for all five QM rubrics, so you can bring the Standards (without annotations) in to your presentations and discussions as both a way to discuss quality assurance measures and to generate greater awareness of Quality Matters.”
Here is a presentation Bethany did about about creating templates. It’s a great example of how to talk about QM with non-members:
To help you speak about QM at non-QM conferences and events, please consider the following guidelines:
You'll want to include:
- The QM logo: To request a copy of the QM logo for use in your presentation, please complete the logo download form.
- Quality Matters copyright: The Quality Matters copyright information — © 2021 Quality Matters. All rights reserved. — must be included when showing proprietary information such as the General Standards.
- How you are using QM: Talk about how you are using QM and how QM has helped you meet your goals.
- Source citation: Be sure to always cite your source.
- A reference to QM as a quality assurance association: If you are looking for the best way to describe QM, please feel free to use language from our website or from our press release templates.
- Programs and services offered by QM: You can discuss the various programs and services offered by Quality Matters including Higher Ed, K-12, Publisher and CPE memberships, workshops, course reviews and program reviews.
Please be sensitive about the following:
- Rubric Annotations: Rubric Annotations cannot be shared publicly. When sharing information about the QM Rubric, only the General Standards and Specific Review Standards without Annotations can be shared.
- Any material you see in a QM professional development workshop or in another venue such as a QM overview is considered intellectual property and cannot be shared without written permission from QM.
If there is something you want to include in your presentation but are unsure if you are able to use it, please don’t hesitate to contact Quality Matters to find out. Depending on the situation, we may also be able to grant permission for a certain graphic or other intellectual property material to be included.
You may also want to consider purchasing QM brochures to distribute during your presentation. The brochures provide key information about QM, and a glimpse into the Annotations, that will be beneficial to your audience.
