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Streamline Course Review Process for Quality Assurance. Mingming.Shao@dsu.edu Haomin.Wang@dsu.edu Dakota State University. Quality Assurance. Standards to guide instructors in designing and developing online courses. Quality Assurance.
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Streamline Course Review Processfor Quality Assurance Mingming.Shao@dsu.edu Haomin.Wang@dsu.edu Dakota State University
Quality Assurance • Standards to guide instructors in designing and developing online courses.
Quality Assurance • Standards to guide peer reviewers to evaluate online courses and suggest improvement.
Standards • Course navigation. • Class communication. • Specification of learning objectives. • Alignment between learning objectives, learning activities, and assessment measures. • Appropriate use of media, resources and technology tools.
Review Background (1) • Since 2006, South Dakota EUC (Electronic University Consortium) adopted Quality Matters standards. • In the system level, 3% of the online courses are randomly selected each semester for quality assurance reviews.
Review Background (2) • At the university level, all newly developed or redesigned courses are reviewed after they are taught for one semester. • All online courses are assigned a future three-year review date based on the date of initial or last review.
Review Roles Coordinator
Review Roles • Each online course is reviewed by two faculty members, in communication with the course instructor. • An instructor may need to serve as a reviewer of courses taught by other instructors. • Instructional designer coordinates the process and writes a review report.
Review Procedures • Select courses. • Self review. • Alert the coordinator and reviewers when self review is complete. • Peer review. • Reviewer feedback to the coordinator and instructor. • Course instructor responds and makes improvement.
Issues • Rubric cumbersome to use. • Delay in sending feedback. • Difficulty for coordination, data analysis, and reporting. • Time-consuming and inefficient.
Solution: A Web Portal coordinator A web portal instructors reviewers
Our Solution • Database support • User login information and access logs. • Review standards and related annotations and examples. • Review input, both self review and peer review. • Review status, in progress or completed.
Our Solution (continued) • Consistency: Same rubric for self review, peer review, and coordinator reference. • Immediacy: Update instantly reflected for all users. • Convenience: Annotations and examples as links for each standard. • Coordinator can monitor the reviewer process in real time.
Instructor’s Interface • Sees a list of courses to be self reviewed. • Can complete a self review in multiple sessions. • View links of Start, Edit and View. • View links of reviewers’ feedback.
Instructor’s Review Process • Select Yes or No. • View the annotations and examples. • Review points can be automatically calculated. • Submits a self review, sending an e-mail notification to coordinator and the assigned reviewers.
Reviewers’ Interface • A list of courses to be reviewed. • Links to self reviews available. • Can complete a review in multiple sessions. • View links of Start, Edit and View.
Reviewers’ Review Process • Select Yes or No. • View the annotations and examples. • Review points can be automatically calculated. • Upon review submission, an e-mail alert sent to both coordinator and instructor.
Coordinator’s Interface • View a list of all courses, instructors, reviewers, system reviewed courses with progress marks indicating. • Can check self reviews and review progress or completed. • can re-open a course to allow re-submitting of a self review or review.
Benefits (1) • Cleaner and scalable interface for the rubric. Annotations and examples hidden by default and available at a click. • Instructors and reviewers can save a partially completed self review or review and return later to continue. • Self review makes the instructor more self conscious of course design and quality assurance.
Benefits (2) • When a self review or review is completed, relevant persons will be automatically notified by e-mail. • Much easier for the coordinator to monitor the review progress, and facilitate communication between instructor and peer reviewers. • Communication between instructor and peer reviewers is beneficial to both sides in their own teaching.
Benefits (3) • Much easier for the coordinator to collect review data and get the review findings. • The findings help us how to define our trainings in course design and improvement.
Lesson Learned • Instructional designers offer help to instructors before, during and after self review. • Self review should start early. • Instructors provide notes in self reviews to guide reviewers. • Just-in-time improvement encouraged. • Share best practices.
Upgrade Plan • Integration with additional instructional design and faculty support resources. • Integration with distance student services and online tutoring.