Conference Presentations

Evangeline Varonis, The University of Akron

Jillian Jevack, Quality Matters

Michael Johanyak, The Univesity of Akron

How can collages, purposeful flaws, and no-win scenarios make over your engagement levels? Learn the subtle art of embedding microchallenge ingredients throughout your course to whet your students’ appetite and keep them coming back for more.

This session will take the format of a panel discussion framed by Gay's (2010) six attributes of culturally responsive teaching. The five-member panel will provide concrete examples of online instructional design and subsequent delivery practices that are reflective of Gay's six attributes of culturally responsive learning environments being validating, comprehensive, multi-dimensional, empowering, transformative, and emancipatory.

What does the term hybrid mean to you? Has it changed in the last year? We developed a new blended format that draws upon best practices for face-to-face, online, and the virtual classroom. Come join us to discover how Hybrid can be new for you too!

Rethinking your multiple-choice exams? Tired of discussions that seem like busywork? This session will highlight assessment types, examples, and strategies, including designing authentic assessments and using LMS tools to support your assessment goals.

Due to the misfortune of the current pandemic, obtaining student engagement has become an extremely difficult endeavor. So how do we cope when our once effective delivery methods are no longer keeping our students engaged? Considering how the pedagogy relates to the student experience during this pandemic, is extremely important in the process of developing opportunities to transform passive encounters to active and meaningful experiences.

Typically, decisions guiding blended instruction were framed by considering what content could be moved online using well developed training and support tools.  However, the COVID-19 pandemic suddenly shifted everything online. Instead of substituting established online approaches, some faculty began “remote instruction,” holding hours-long, large scale, online synchronous classes.  This model met with mixed but mostly negative reactions from students.

Typically, decisions guiding blended instruction were framed by considering what content could be moved online using well developed training and support tools.  However, the COVID-19 pandemic suddenly shifted everything online. Instead of substituting established online approaches, some faculty began “remote instruction,” holding hours-long, large scale, online synchronous classes.  This model met with mixed but mostly negative reactions from students.

What is regular and substantive interaction, anyhow? The Department of Education doesn’t provide a clear answer, but it is an important compliance question. Specific Review Standard 5.2 discusses *opportunities* for learner-instructor interaction, but Indiana University wanted more. Recognizing that compliance is part of quality assurance, our academic leadership asked us to create a QM-style “interaction standard.”

In this presentation, we cover the following:

1. What is interaction?

The presenters, Denise Kreiger and Sharon Stoerger, School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University, discuss a newly designed course project where students construct digital stories about hashtag activism movements using the Storify technology tool. This project extends the large-lecture hall classroom through an "online component" in an LMS to create a substantial blended learning environment.

The presenters, Denise Kreiger and Sharon Stoerger, will discuss a newly designed course project where students construct digital stories about hashtag activism movements using the Storify technology tool. This project extends the large-lecture hall classroom through an "online component" in an LMS to create a substantial blended learning environment. It provides students with an engaging, inquiry-based authentic learning experience that integrates QM standards 2-6 and can be implemented in any delivery format: face-to-face/web-enhanced, hybrid/blended, or online courses.

Have you or your department been contemplating implementing a redesign process on your campus, but just don’t quite know where to start. In this session, we will share our approach, policy and lessons learned in implementing a redesign process for an accelerated online program. Participants will be able to takeaway ideas and strategies to implement their own redesign process to provide high quality courses within their institution.

Have you or your department been contemplating implementing a redesign process on your campus, but just don’t quite know where to start. In this session, we will share our approach, policy and lessons learned in implementing a redesign process for an accelerated online program. Participants will be able to takeaway ideas and strategies to implement their own redesign process to provide high quality courses within their institution. 

Interested in sharing your experiences with the digital teaching and learning approaches implemented over the past year in response to COVID? Join us to discuss successes, challenges, areas of growth, and approaches to transform distance education.

We're all about continuous improvement!  How can QM serve you more effectively?  QM Coordinators are invited to attend this interactive session to learn about and discuss new and planned enhancements to subscriber tools, processes and resources.  The session is an opportunity to share your ideas directly with QM leaders responsible for implementation.

When is a course “done”? Is it when you first hit publish, or when all of the standards have been met? This session will address how a course is never truly finished, but in a state of constant evolution toward the best possible version. We’ll talk about instructional and design challenges and enhancements faced along the way of creating a course using a truly collaborative process. Iterative improvement for the win!

We empirically examined the content of the peer review comments elicited in our first round of internal Quality Matters peer reviews. Comments were evaluated with three frames in mind: comparison to QM recommendations for effective comments, qualitative analysis of content, comparison to theory on feedback intervention effects on performance.

When the topic of QM Research is brought up, what comes to mind for many is research on the impact on courses, instructors, and students that results from implementing Quality Matters. Studies on QM impact are, in fact, one important focus of QM Research, with the others being research that supports the QM Rubric and process and research that examines the use of QM. A basis in regular, rigorous, continuous validation through research is what makes the QM Rubric unique.

The term 'diversity' encompasses differences of culture, background, and experience among individuals and groups. Such differences are evident in race, ethnicity, disabiities, national origin, languages, color, gender, social orieintation, age, veteran status, socioeconomic status, political, spiritual and philosophical faith or affiliation. Using this definition of diversity, we look within the context of an online course and ask the following questions: How does one begin to understand differences with the absence of social cues familiar to traditional classroom experience?

The QM RubricTM was developed and continues to be informed by independent distance/online educational-focused research.  The QM Research Colleagues (QMRC) will lead the session by providing an overview of research literature that informs the QM standards.  After a brief introduction to the relationship of original research to the QM Rubric and a walkthrough of the QM research database, samples of research and talking points will be provided for each of the eight general standards.