Conference Presentations

This session chronicles the initiative of a Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) program to improve the quality of its online courses. The initiative included three objectives in the application of research-based best practices for online course design: (1) train faculty, (2) provide internal resources and guidance, and (3) achieve external certification of Ed.D. program courses. As a result of the successful completion of these objectives, the program outcomes included: improved online student experiences; faculty, course, and program recognition; and a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Accelerated courses and programs are becoming more common within higher education institutions. However, compressing the amount of time over which these courses and programs take place can result in less time for students to reflect, which, in turn, can result in poor learning outcomes. This session will present the findings of a research study that investigated the instructional design strategies used to promote deep learning and how instructional designers decide which deep learning strategies to use in accelerated online courses and programs.

This study contributes to a better understanding of instructors’ perceptions of equity issues within online teaching and learning. The researchers interviewed 21 instructors at one university across disciplines regarding their experience with and recommendations for attending to issues of inclusion, diversity, equity, and access (IDEA) in online teaching. Findings revealed that instructors characterized online teaching and IDEA issues as distinct skill sets and that they were not necessarily prepared to apply IDEA issues in online teaching.

An overview of the recently completed Quality Matters in the Research: A Systematic Literature Review (2015-2021) will be presented.  Results from the review and analysis of 102 QM-focused and QM-informed articles and dissertations will be highlighted. Takeaways on conducting a systematic literature review as well as recommendations for future studies will be offered.

Quality Matters (QM) is one of the most widely adopted sets of standards for best practices in online courses to promote student learning. In this study, we examined student perceptions of the impact of QM-certified courses on students’ learning and engagement. Fifty graduate students enrolled in online courses completed a survey developed based on the QM Rubric items. The QM framework includes 43 individual standards clustered into eight general categories.

How can we communicate the value of Quality Matters to our faculty partners in a compelling way? In this talk, we describe how we integrate authentic, relevant, and up-to-date research findings to convey the importance of Quality Matters to instructors across the University of Arizona.

This session shares the results of a mixed-methods research study on the impact of Quality Matters professional development workshops on facuty's pedgogical practices in online, face-to-face, and hybrid modalities.

More frequently, universities are training their faculty to teach online. As the number of quality assurance trainings increase, the need to evaluate its usefulness also increases. One way to assess quality assurance training is to examine faculty perceptions. In this session we will be discussing the results of a qualitative study that looked at these perceptions. It was found in this qualitative study that 96% of those who responded found their training helpful.

A STEM faculty learning community was created at North Carolina Central University to assess online science course offerings and instruction. Faculty completed the APPQMR course coupled with services from the Division of Extended Studies and implemented changes in their existing online courses. This presentation expands on the research published in the QM-focused 2017 edition of the American Journal of Distance Education on the impact of that training and application of Rubric Standards on the design and student outcomes for an Introductory Biology course over four terms.