Conference Presentations

Problem or Opportunity?  Either one can be addressed by blended learning.  Does your school district have a need to be met?  A blended learning model may be the answer.  This session will showcase the development of a Blended Middle School Enrichment program and how it met the needs of students.  This presentation will begin with an overview of our virtual school, school district, and partnership with our State collaborative and content and instructional experts in blended learning.

This session will showcase a sustainable continuous improvement model through a compelling case study of the nursing program at Loma Linda University. Through a unique partnership, Loma Linda and iDesign have worked together to redesign the online RN to BS program.

The goals of this partnership are two-fold; 1. To develop a successful degree program and 2. To implement a Continuous Improvement (CI) program in order to create connections between courses, degree programs and institutional goals and, in turn, support accreditation efforts.  

Standard verbs to describe human capabilities, with examples of phrases incorporating action verbs.

The amount of research on online learning and quality assurance accumulates faster than anyone can keep up with it. In this session, attendees will get a summary of recent research findings on some of today's hot topics related to online learning and quality assurance that will let them see beyond the buzz to what has been found via research - and what has not - in order to put their own online learning and quality assurance agendas and efforts into practice.

In a world in which technology is increasingly ubiquitous, artists continue to struggle to find a sense of purpose, community, and humanistic value in digitally augmented spaces. We were placed in the rare position of having a choreographer and photographer seek our online learning team to translate their in-person workshops into blended learning environments. Through the lens of the QM framework, we were able to leverage multimedia, virtual conferencing, and project-based learning in an online environment to enhance face-to-face coursework.

How can you meet the needs of undergrad and graduate students? What about students taking 1 credit vs. 6 credits? What if they come from five different colleges? What if they are all working on different projects throughout the course? These are the challenges we faced as we designed a way to meet all of those needs in an online course that will need to scale to over 4,000 students.

In this session we will be discussing the benefit to utilizing a landing/homepage within an online course and how it aligns with Quality Matters. 

The assumption that better student performance data invariably leads to improved student outcomes does not, unfortunately, hold true in many schools and colleges. Often, many challenges get in the way of improving student outcomes. There are specific challenges in using data to empower teaching effectiveness on an ongoing basis. Getting the right insight at the right time from data requires a commitment to both informational and organizational change. This presentation explores some lessons learned from our experience.

QM isn’t just for online courses. This session will show which QM K-12 Rubric standards need to be modified in order to more correctly fit within a blended learning program as well as guide the learner in how to align a blended learning program to meet these modified standards.  This session will also review pedagogical and androgogical best practices used in blended learning and how aligning them with the QM K-12 Rubric will insure integrity in course development, implementation, and delivery.

This session describes the unique partnership of a college faculty member and a high school teacher as they gain expertise with the QM Rubric and peer review process before leading a statewide effort to create and certify a hybrid high school English course that will likely reach thousands of high school students across the state of California, and beyond.

A Guide to Writing Unambiguous Objectives

Human Capability Verbs.  A frame work/rubric for writing effective objectives that address the universal five categories of learning:

• Intellectual Skill
• Cognitive Strategy
• Verbal Information
• Motor skill
• Attitude

At a time when resources are thin, demands are high, and outcomes are king, barriers to adequately supporting and improving quality-focused initiatives can feel insurmountable. Practical strategies for transformational leadership are essential as college teams make the case for guided academic pathways, change, and quality to increase student completion of credentials leading to transfer and meaningful work.

This presentation describes the steps being taken at St. Cloud State University to improve the quality of online courses by increasing the percentage of faculty teaching online with Quality Matters training. Since 2016, the number of courses offered online at SCSU has grown; thus, a robust quality assurance structure is needed. Preliminary data for online education in the MN State system partly drove the effort, as did survey data collected from faculty who had completed a Quality Matters training.

The 23-campus California State University QA program has progressively built a culture of quality and evidence for effective online-blended courses since 2011. This session will demonstrate how we evolved to go beyond professional development activities, to implementing a four-stage course certification process, disseminating certified course exemplars, and analyzing results of our student impact research efforts. Multiple opportunities for discussion-engagement and resources will be made available.

The 23-campus California State University Quality Assurance program has progressively built a culture of quality and evidence for effective online-blended courses since 2011. This session will demonstrate how we evolved to go beyond professional development activities, to implementing a four-stage course certification process, disseminating certified course exemplars, and analyzing results of our student impact research efforts. Multiple opportunities for discussion-engagement and resources will be made available.

In this workshop, an instructor and a librarian working as team teachers will demonstrate how they designed a Hybrid Business Communication course to meet QM Specific standards 2 and 5.  Library Literacy Skills are highlighted in the research portion of the course.  Session participants will be able to apply the tenets of hybrid course design to any course that they are creating.  In addition, standards 2 and 5 will be spotlighted and defined.  An explanation will be shared to help improve course design as a hybrid blended course.

This session will demonstrate how a well-designed on-line course can enable professors to use unique, low stakes, write-to-learn assignments to (1) improve engagement and student persistence, (2) help students develop an effective learning, researching, or writing process (3) help instructors to improve their understanding of their student's capabilities and points of confusion and (4) improve the social presence of students in their online courses.

This session will demonstrate how a well-designed on-line course can enable professors to use unique, low stakes, write-to-learn assignments to (1) improve engagement and student persistence, (2) help students develop an effective learning, researching, or writing process (3) help instructors to improve their understanding of their student's capabilities and points of confusion and (4) improve the social presence of students in their online courses.

Standard 3.1 is one of the QM Alignment Standards that assists with learner success through demonstration of proficiency of assignments and meeting outcomes. This QM Standard helps higher education institutions demonstrate accreditation goals by aligning learning outcomes to assignments. This session will demonstrate one approach using the BASIC institutional outcomes (Broad Integrative Learning, Applied Learning, Specialized Learning, Intellectual Skills, and Civic Engagement) to assist with ongoing curricular improvement through outcome tracking.