Quality: Matters at CVTC “In House Plan”

Quality Matters at CVTC: The “In-House Plan”

A Plan to Implement the Quality Matters Process

I. Introduction

Chippewa Valley Technical College is committed to ensuring student success in online learning.

In the early days of distance education, we made decisions based on the knowledge and research available at the time. Over the last decade that body of literature has grown. Today we can use this literature to guide our decisions related to quality online learning.

The Quality Matters (QM) project is grounded in this research. It is validated at colleges across the country, and is applicable to the needs of Chippewa Valley Technical College. The QM process is being adopted in part. At this time the college will integrate this concept as an internal quality review system. CVTC’s QM process must come from a partnership between faculty, leadership, and instructional design, with the intention to ensure consistent quality for our students.

CVTC has many experienced online instructors. These instructors used ETech Standards and created courses that have been offered for many semesters. This plan will move the standards to courses up to another level to what the current body of research suggests. The QM model is validated, collaborative, realistic, and attainable.

II. Vision

The overall vision for QM at CVTC is that by 2014, the vast majority of all courses at CVTC, past, present, and future, will have passed a QM review team process. The culture of online course development and instruction will transcend to Quality Matters process as a natural part of the E-Learning design and instruction process, ultimately improving student learning.

III. The FIPSE Grant Quality Matters Project

The Quality Matters (QM: http://www.qualitymatters.org) project created an inter-institutional continuous improvement process for assuring the quality of online courses. This process is faculty-centered, peer review-based, and grounded in research literature, best practices, and instructional design principles.

The QM project involves numerous faculty, and potentially instructional designers. The QM team identified 40 key elements of an online course that have shown to positively impact student learning. They distributed these elements across eight broad standards (see below), and used them to create the web-based rubric. The 40 items are assigned a point value of 1, 2, or 3, with a “3” considered essential (mandatory for all QM courses), and the 2 and 1 being highly valuable. For each element, annotations and multiple examples from real online courses were compiled.

Eight Broad Standards:

1. Course Overview and Introduction

2. Learning Objectives

3. Assessment and Measurement

4. Resources and Materials

5. Learner Engagement

6. Course Technology

7. Learner Support

8. Accessibility

IV. Benefits to the Adoption of the QM Process:

Benefits for CVTC Faculty and as an Institution:

Demonstrates college commitment to excellence in online learning
Instills a heightened awareness of quality standards.
Continuous quality review of online courses through a systematic process.
Utilize a process grounded in research that helps students, and is faculty centered. Faculty helping faculty is the goal.
Encourage and support on-going faculty development through the training of peer course reviewers.
Raise the visibility of quality standards in course design for online, hybrid and f2f classes
Provides access to instructional design help.
Offers a team approach to continuous online course development.
Strengthen the college’s accreditation standing.

Benefits for Students

Provides access to more quality online courses.
Fosters a learning environment conducive to student success in the online environment.
Ensures that student achieve the desired learning outcomes due to alignment of critical course components.

V. Proposed Implementation Plan

Spring 2007 projections estimate our total number of unduplicated online courses to be approximately 175 sections. There are two tiers to this implementation. New course design, and existing course updates.

The expectation will be in place that all online courses have the QM standards from the rubric embedded by August of 2009. Staff Development will provide multiple training opportunities, as well as workshops to improve course design. Managers will be asked to use the QM rubric when they review online courses during instructor’s bi-annual reviews. After August 2009, QM standards should be evident even if the course has not been peer reviewed.

The following will be policy at CVTC related to the transformation of QM peer reviewed online learning:

New Courses: All new online courses will be designed using the QM rubric for instructional design. Instructional Designers will assist instructors when possible to align courses using the rubric.

Courses designed using the QM rubric would be initially available for enrollment for two semesters.
During the 3^rd sequence of the course, the course would be reviewed and QM standards must be fully achieved.
The course must be approved to QM standard by the fourth time the course could be offered. So during the third offering a version would be going through the update and approval process using a non-active course from the second offering of that course.
Essentially all NEW online courses at CVTC must be peer reviewed and approved before that section could be offered a 4^th time.

Existing Course Plan: The QM steering committee will design a QM transformation plan to review existing courses. All online courses will be expected to meet the QM standard by the summer of 2009. Peer review for most courses will remain optional initially, unless identified in Priority A or B below.

Priority A – August 2007- August 2009(2 year goal) year time window in sequence of their offering to the public

1. Courses related to programs that will be offered 100% online will be reviewed by the QM Review Process (Example from CVTC’s Online Rollout Plan)

· Instructional Assistant

· Marketing

· Business Management

· HIT

2. Courses related to the new University Transfer degree that need online development.

3. An additional priority is “NEW” courses that have been through their two semesters of running and now require a peer review in semester three.

Priority B – August 2007 – August 2012 (5 year goal)

1. Managers may request a review if there are quality concerns in that course.

2. QM Committee Determines the Following Priority:

· Courses that run multiple offerings with an average of 4 or more sections per semester.

· Faculty requests for peer reviews on their courses.

Peer review for most courses will remain optional initially, unless identified in Track A or B above.

Multi Course Plan: Once an online QM master course has been created, then instructors will have access to use that approved course.

If an individual instructor chooses not to use an approved QM course, they may submit their personal course version for QM review approval that following semester. This process would not be peer reviewed because the dollars for peer review have already been used. The course would be reviewed using the QM rubric by the Instructional Support and Staff Development team.
Courses that don’t pass will be asked to make changes to meet the standard.
Instructors using their own version will not be allowed to select that online course during course selection process if they have not updated their course to the QM level and have received approval.
This instructor has the following semester after the other is ready to go online to bring their own course to approval.
In essence you have one semester to bring your own version up to QM approval so you can use your own version for online delivery.
This applies only after a QM approved version of the course has been designed.

VI. The CVTC QM Review Process

To conduct a course review, a team of three “reviewers” use the rubric to assess an online course. Reviewers will be recruited from experienced online instructors at CVTC that have completed peer reviewer training. Although the team members will vary with each review process, all teams should have two reviewers from other departments and potentially one content expert. However, due to the unique nature of some course content, it may not be possible to have a content expert reviewer on every review team.

With communication from the instructor to guide them, the review team members will work both individually and collaboratively to provide a compiled report that highlights exceptional elements and provides specific recommendations for improvement. A course receives CVTC QM Recognition when it demonstrates all 3-point essential review elements and receives a score of 68-80.

SAMPLE CVTC QM Review Process:

Step	Task	Responsible Party	Estimated Time
	Course designed/redesigned using QM Rubric	Faculty
1.	Course identified – instructor submits Instructor Worksheet.	Instructor	1 week
2.	Pre-Meeting (3 reviewers, faculty, and Team Chair	3 reviewers Faculty developer Team chair	1 week
3.	Enroll peer course review members in your course. (should be in a copy, not a live course)	Faculty – Tech Support	2 days
4.	Send in login directions to review team	Team chair	2 days
5.	Peer review occurs	3 reviewers	3 weeks
6.	Master reviewer (faculty) tabulates and reports to faculty developer.	Master reviewer Faculty developer	1 week
7.	Faculty developers revises	Faculty developer	2 weeks
8.	Master reviewer double checks changes	Master reviewer	1 week
9.	Approval form submitted to Team chair	Master reviewer
10.	Course earns CVTC QM recognition

VII. Key Factors to Implementation

1. Costs

Each peer review has the following fixed costs associated with it:

1. Internal Review: $150 paid to each faculty reviewer on the review team. Total $450. One faculty would be designated as the Master reviewer of the three and would receive $50 extra.

2. Each faculty reviewer must be a certified QM reviewer trained and have experience teaching online.

3. External review. A full external review is possible if budget allows. This would include additional fees to QM at Maryland Online. CVTC may consider external reviews in the future or by request on an instructor.

Estimated Costs:

Single Course SAMPLE: Course: Revision of the course Rocket Science 999-101

Team Member	Quantity	Per Person	Total	FICA % .0765	Retirement % .106	Total Cost
Reviewers	3	$150 each	$450 Total	$34.43	$47.70	$532.13
Master Reviewer (from above)	1	$50	$50 Total	$3.80	$5.30	$59.10
Total Cost						$591.23

Estimate of 1^st Year Cost Fiscal Year 2008 – Covered 100% by Title III

Projects	Reviewers	Per Person	Total	FICA % .0765	Retirement % .106	Total Cost
No NEW PROJECTS
10 Projects REVISED	30	$150 each	$4500	$344.25	$477.00	$5321.21
Master Reviewers	10	$50 each Master	$500	$38.25	$53.00	$591.25
Total Cost						$5912.46

Estimate of Traditional Yearly Costs beginning Fiscal Year 2009

Covered 50% by Title III for year 2009. Future years CVTC budgets for 100%

Projects	Reviewers	Per Person	Total	FICA % .0765	Retirement % .106	Total Cost
16 Projects NEW	48	$150 each	$7200	$550.80	$763.20	$8514.00
8 Projects REVISED	24	$150 each	$3600	$275.40	$381.60	$4257.00
Master Reviewers	24	$50 each Master	$1200	$91.80	$127.20	$1419.00
Total Cost						$14190.00

2. QM Committee

CVTC has established a QM Steering Committee comprised of faculty and leadership to develop and implement a faculty centered plan that is collaborative, structured, and functional. This committee in conjunction with CVTC Academic Council will be the decision making authority for concerns, exceptions, and policy related to the implementation of QM at CVTC. Faculty can submit an exception request to the QM committee anytime prior to their review for consideration.

3. Faculty Participation

Although it is important to review the college’s online courses in a systematic fashion, it is also important that this review process be driven by faculty. This can and will provide an opportunity for on-going professional development. Faculty that serve as peer reviewers typically report that the QM training peer review process results in positive changes to their own courses. To promote peer review as a faculty development activity, CVTC will encourage experienced online instructors to become trained and participate in an online review of courses. The QM process can add to a culture of teachers helping teachers.

4. Staff Participation

Support will be needed for this initiative from around the college. IS-SD team will facilitate the Team Chair responsibilities with the exception of the scoring. The master reviewer from the faculty peer review teams will combine all scores from the reviewers.

5. Training & Support

Faculty who serve as peer reviewers must participate in QM training prior to the review. Training can be completed in an online module and/or occasional onsite training. The goal is to have our own ONSITE QM trainer by Fall of 2008.

Additional training will be developed to help faculty developers understand the rubric and learn how they can improve their courses and meet the standard 85% for approval in the CVTC QM process.

6. Management of This Process

This process will be under the general supervision of the Vice President for Instruction. The QM process will be implemented by the Instructional Support and Staff Development Team. The day to day responsibilities such as tracking, establishing a schedule, forming review teams, and coordinating training, will be undertaken by the Title III Director in conjunction with the Curriculum Specialist. All peer reviewing and scoring of the peer reviews will be managed by faculty except in mandatory situations where IS SD team needs to review.

7. Recognition

Techniques will be considered and designed to recognize a QM course. Website highlights, Blackboard identification, special logo’s etc… In addition the QM Steering Committee hopes to develop a faculty recognition process as well.

VIII. Summary of Activity (As of Jun 1^st 2007)

1. Faculty currently trained as QM Reviewers: 26

2. Faculty trained in QM Applications (Ron Legon’ experienced user training): 17

3. Leadership trained as QM Reviewers: 4

4. Leadership trained in QM Purpose: 12