Conference Presentations

We applied two different approaches to the design and development of MOOCs and delivered them in the open source LMS Sakai using the QMContinuing and Professional Education Standards as guidelines.

Instructional design staff and faculty presenters will examine the highlights and pitfalls of the MOOC course design and development experience.

My presentation will be in prezi.

Providing multiple means of learning for students when designing World Language courses requires deliberate design and an intentional focus on digital accessibility. Meeting the needs of all learners in a World Language course often requires cross-organizational support and communication. Collaborate with fellow educators to discuss strategies for supporting World Language learners when designing and teaching online World Language courses that meet the digital accessibility needs of students. 

Videos can make learning come alive. Especially if they are teacher created. One misconception is that Closed Captioning (CC) is just for deaf and hard of hearing. What about students who are not auditory learners or students whose native language is not English? Closed Captioning can help all learners, but not all CC videos are created equal. Participants will learn how to search for CC videos on both YouTube and Google and evaluate it for accuracy.

Imagine that you were sitting in on a class and you could not hear, view, interact with, and/or interpret the material being taught. Chances are, you might end up feeling disconnected, isolated, and more than anything, frustrated. The good news is that when we take time to specifically focus on accessibility when designing and deploying course content, we can break down those barriers and the possibilities are endless. Come join me on this accessibility adventure!

The last 10 years have seen the rise of large-scale student success efforts focused on helping more and more diverse students finish what they start in higher education. In this presentation, we'll explore how quality online and blended learning - including competency-based options - have expanded access and success in higher education. Next, we'll dive into how the digital signal coming from these efforts has informed and improved student success work, especially advising and strategic-nudging outreach.

Education has seen an increase in the number of one-to-one initiatives in the past few years. As a result, many institutions have been replacing traditional printed textbooks with a variety of digital resources. Moving away from print options should have brought good news for individuals with different perceptual, motor, or cognitive abilities. Unfortunately, digital content developers have implemented new technologies without regard to persons with disabilities leaving many students on the outside looking in.

Embrace the power of storytelling to increase engagement and information retention. Making that story interactive can be even more powerful. Join us for a hand-on session in which we create interactive stories using a free tool called Twine.

Over the past few years, our college has been working on encouraging faculty to develop robust QM courses. However, we discovered that faculty are overwhelmed at the thought of redesigning courses to meet QM standards and recommendations. One faculty even said that taking on QM was like “eating an elephant.” We found that her views were shared by many other faculty who simply did not want to invest the time due to the fear of beginning and undertaking such a large project.

After losing $1.6M in performance-based funding due to a 1% decline in success rates, our college committed to improve student success. Learn how a large, multi-campus, unionized college implemented Quality Matters, leading to a 4.6% increase in student success rates.

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.

This presentation showcases our attempt at Stevenson University to use Quality Matter rubric as a guide, a free, cloud-based Course Management System (CMS) as a structured supplementary channel, and emerging technologies as a model for the process of online course development. We hope this approach would help our instructors embrace both QM Rubric and emerging technologies, and build the collegial and collaborative relationship between faculties and instructional designers to improve the quality of our online courses.

The presentation will highlight the alignment of QM standards in an international, collaborative, and online learning context. It will center on the development and engagement of an international collabortion learning unit between two colleges and courses - The College of Westchester (New York) and Empire State college (Panama).

A STEM faculty learning community was created at North Carolina Central University to assess online science course offerings and instruction. Faculty completed the APPQMR course coupled with services from the Division of Extended Studies and implemented changes in their subsequent online courses. This presentation describes the impact of that training and application of Rubric Standards on the design and student outcomes for an Introductory Biology course over four terms, as published in the QM-focused 2017 edition of the American Journal of Distance Education.

Clear expectations, intuitive navigation, easily found course components -- all good ideas for online course design, right? We know them when we see them, but can we purposefully design them? Join us to discuss how the design of structure and interface of online courses can benefit the  learner, educator, and organization as a whole. Also, discuss how program-wide design standards can help support learner success, and break down examples of structures that can serve as a  guide when designing, updating, or improving online courses.

Presented by Sandra Johnson and Susan Bussman, New Mexico State University

Course Developers and Instructors work together to create a course that best meets student needs, facilitates learning, and encourages communication.  Often, members of the team do not realize the full scope of each others role.  Switching roles affords a new appreciation for the contingencies and systems involved. This contributes to a better working relationship, as well as improves the quality of the course as a whole.

Five Learning Objectives:

Two recent surveys, by the University of Rochester and by Quality Matters in partnership with Eduventures, have focused on the role of chief online officer, how that role is being defined at institutions across the U.S., and their perspectives on current institutional practices, priorities, and challenges. Among many responsibilities, these individuals are key to the response of their institutions to accreditation, regulation, and compliance issues.

This study explored how class size affects the quality of online language teaching and learning. The present study compared the experiences of instructors and students in two second semester Spanish language classes. There were 125 students enrolled in the large-scale class and 25 students enrolled in the small-scale class. Each class had one instructor and no teaching assistants. Two instruments were used to collect data, a Teacher Questionnaire and an anonymous Student Questionnaire.

Survey participants were asked to align the Quality Matters (QM) higher education rubric standards with the seven (7) principles for good practice in undergraduate education developed by Chickering and Gamson (1987).  Participants reviewed the QM higher education rubric standards and categorized them into the seven (7) principles based on their perception and experience.  The participants were faculty, instructional designers, online program coordinators, directors of centers for teaching and learning and other educational professionals.