2016 Annual Conference

Retention is a hot topic in online courses, where Patterson and McFadden (2009) found dropout rates to be up to 6-7 times higher than the same on-campus programs. However, the QM Rubric can be used to design courses that can lead toward better retention and success of online learners. This session will review some of the literature about online retention and the QM Specific Standards that can help to keep students engaged.

The purpose of the present study is to understand faculty, student, and administrator perceptions of quality in distance education courses. Our research question was: What is the meaning of "quality" in an online course to administrators, faculty, and students? Qualitative data revealed the top 7 quality features and the discrepancies among the rankings of the 7 quality features among faculty, students, and administrators.

QM Members can login to MyQM and view the QM Success Story recording related to this presentation.

Faculty yearn for the opportunity to share and reflect on course design strategies as well as best pedagogical practices for instructional delivery. QM now offers a fresh opportunity with the independent online IYOC. Discover how faculty at Portland Community College have benefited from this new flexible approach to the IYOC. Participant collaboration through a F2F follow-up workshop has provided the chance for faculty to share and refine course improvement plans as well as discuss teaching pedagogy best practices for instructional delivery. Early results have been promising.

Poster Presentation

This interactive and engaging session will focus on how online learning principles, specifically the QM General Standards are applied in the face to face classroom.  Often, face to face courses lack clarity around the QM gold standards of "alignment".  Specifically, course goals, objectives, resources, assessments, learner support, etc. become lost to many students due to the "Sage on the Stage" teaching effect.

Failure is not an option right . . . well, actually it is!  Learning from my mistakes has been an integral part of my current success managing our system-wide Quality Matters program.  In this session I'll share the mistakes I've made so participants don't have to make them too.  I'll also offer some practical tips and solutions for managing a QM program that participants can apply today.  Participants will share their program management challenges, receive feedback from peers, and start writing an action plan.

QM Standards can be effectively applied to an in-person, traditional, lecture-based course to achieve a more dynamic and purposeful class room. This session will look at how course competencies can be supported using QM Standards, including the syllabus, independent and group activities, lectures, assessments for homework, exams, and projects.

This session will share ways in which the California State University system has developed a mature and robust QM-based-program for assessing and recognizing blended-online courses, as well as a repository of objectives-indexed exemplars for adoption by other faculty or for modeling by instructional support staff. Resulting resources will be shared with participants via open access. Discussion of how best to implement and accomplish these campus-system outcomes will be encouraged and facilitated and participants will certainly have much to offer.