2018 Mountain Regional Conference

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 session will look at how a department is moving forward in developing quality online courses through a scaffolded process including an informal peer review process at the department level. Performing an informal peer review will allow the Course Representative the ability to go back and make substantive changes using the feedback given. This process not only helps facilitate better outcomes when the course is submitted for QM certification but also promotes common discussion around online course quality and builds collegiality.

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.

This session will explore the interactive dynamics of online curriculum design that reflect the collective experiences and innovation of our faculty and the leadership of our university's technology center. Our goal is to inspire our students to excel in an online environment and to support our faculty in addressing and solving the quality assurance challenges in an online learning environment.

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.

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

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.

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.

As educators, we often talk about setting up our students for success. However, in this session we will turn the tables and discuss setting up faculty members for success. QM has a set of eight Standards associated with quality online courses; these Standards cover everything from learning objectives to learner support. Even though teachers are responsible for the content in their courses, the use of a template can ease the burden of developing common materials. This session will cover items to include in the template as well as the use of Blackboard Goals.

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.