Conference Presentations

This session addresses the question: “What activities can learners engage in to improve distinct brain areas and processes?” Just like endurance, strength, and agility; your memory, perception, and cognition can be improved through exercise. Many of us are fascinated with puzzles such as Sudoku and crosswords. In addition to releasing dopamine, puzzles have been shown to improve specific areas of the brains. In this session, participants will solve different types of puzzles that stimulate distinct brain areas and processes in the broad areas of memory, perception, and cognition.

Most institutions have faculty who have been teaching online for decades as well as those just starting out. So how do do you ensure that everyone has a common vision for quality? St. Petersburg College expected more and attained more by making it a college priority:

 100% of faculty certified in the LMS

 100% of online/blended faculty certified in Teaching an Online Course

 100% of faculty developing courses certified in Applying the QM Rubric

Discuss potential confounding variables that were identified and accounted for in the study design.

With UConn's increase in hybrid/blended course offerings, faculty's related training and support requests, and research showing student performance gains in hybrid/blended learning environments, a two-week faculty development short course, Exploring Flexible Learning, was created. As an institution adopting Quality Matters, it was important that QM design Standards were met and modeled in the course, as well as applied by faculty participants. We'll share the design and outcomes of our pilot offering.

Discover how dual enrollment enhances equity and inclusion for rural and underserved students. Our university and K-12 partners will share best practices and tackle logistical challenges of virtual dual enrollment programs. Learn how QM standards ensure high-quality courses, providing a solid foundation for successful implementation in diverse educational settings.

Continuous quality improvement requires change - and change is difficult. A transition team can thrive when it recognizes and addresses faculty fears. A faculty survey contrasted faculty perceptions before and after QM revision. Their concerns and assessments inform best practices.

Students often struggle to navigate the online learning environment, getting lost in their courses and becoming frustrated or discouraged. As a result of unclear expectations and navigation, engagement, grades, and retention can be adversely affected. In this session, we will share key takeaways from planning and executing "boot camp" style workshops at each of the five Alamo Colleges in San Antonio, Texas.

We will share our approach of integrating QM principles, peer review, and course creation into our Distance Learning Design Seminar and other faculty development workshops.  This provides a "Gateway" for quality, faculty-developed, student-centered courses.

This study contributes to a better understanding of instructors’ perceptions of equity issues within online teaching and learning. The researchers interviewed 21 instructors at one university across disciplines regarding their experience with and recommendations for attending to issues of inclusion, diversity, equity, and access (IDEA) in online teaching. Findings revealed that instructors characterized online teaching and IDEA issues as distinct skill sets and that they were not necessarily prepared to apply IDEA issues in online teaching.

Towson University's Gold Review Process enables faculty-centered, collaborative peer-reviews of online courses using a customized version of the QM Rubric. In this session, the Director of Distance Education and four faculty members (Family Studies, Health Professions, and Mathematics) who served as Reviewers will share (1) how the Gold Review Process has progressed since its inception in 2015, including plans to scale up in 2018; (2) reflections on becoming certified peer reviewers; and (3) reflections on serving as Gold Review Team members within our institution. 

GA Southern University launched a QM internal course review pilot in Spring 2015 consisting of 10 teams from 9 disciplines. After course reviews were completed, the teams were asked to write a reflection piece of their experience of the review process. They then shared their reflections with the campus during a poster session for a QM Course Review Showcase. This presentation analyzes those reflections and presents the themes that emerged.

Quality Matters (QM) standards aim to enhance student learning through the quality assurance of online courses. This study tries to answer the question whether faculty training on QM standards enhances online course design as perceived by students in terms of learning objective, instructional material, learner engagement, outcome assessment and course technology.

Do you still have faculty trying to teach online classes the same way they teach F2F classes? It is not the same! Training prior to teaching is imperative. How can it be accomplished? Expand the possibilities on your campus and hear how this small CC campus handles training with limited resources.

In this session, participants will gain hands-on familiarity with an innovative program assessment process that has been shown to be effective for implementing meaningful, iterative assessment and in building faculty buy-in for assessment in large, multi-campus, online programs. Participants will leave the session with specific ideas for improving quality assurance processes at their institutions and for making assessment more engaging for faculty.

Are your learning objectives not quite feeling right? Perhaps you have some fake objectives? Or maybe the alignment is upside down?  Let us help you identify topics, assessments, activities, and instructional materials masquerading as objectives and evaluate upside-down alignment.

Grab your accreditation surfboard and ride the wave to QM implementation with us!  From the experience of a mid-size, underfunded state institution, hear how QM has become a beacon of quality assurance across the university.

Join us as we share our process for training and supporting new online faculty within the context of QM's Standards.

Join us as we share our process for training and supporting new online faculty within the context of QM's Standards.

Join us as we share our process for training and supporting new online faculty within the context of QM's Standards.

Walk around the edge of the QM Research pool to see what it looks like - and then dive in for a true understanding of what's under the surface. Get comfortable in the water so you can take a dip whenever you like.