Supporting quality instructional design
through community.
About Us
The Quality Matters Instructional Designers Association (QM IDA) is a special interest group of Quality Matters.
The QM Instructional Designers Association Mission is to promote and improve the quality of online education and student learning through instructional design practice by providing professional development opportunities to strengthen instructional design practice, building community, networking, and fostering mentoring opportunities, promoting quality standards-based practice informed by research and sharing best practices.
As a group we provide self-paced free or low-cost professional development, establish an online space for networking and professional partnerships, promote collaboration and mentorship between instructional design professionals, build a community for everyone, regardless of background, promote quality standards based practice which is informed by research, and participate in problem solving, research, and sharing of best practice.
The goals of the QM IDA are to:
- Provide professional development as well as an online space for networking and development of professional partnerships
- Promote collaboration and mentorship between instructional design professionals in an open community, regardless of background, focused on quality standards based practice which is informed by research
- Encourage instructional design information and resource sharing on a national scale where problem-solving, research, and best practice is freely exchanged.
Sign Up
A current QM subscription — either individually or through an institution — is required for membership in the QM IDA. If you are unsure if your institution is a member, you can search to find out.
Sign Up with Through Your Institution’s QM Membership
- Sign in to your MyQM account*.
- Select the "My Tools" menu.
- Select the Role Applications link.
- Select the QM Instructional Designers Association Application link.
Sign Up with an Individual QM Membership
- Log into or create* a MyQM account
- Click “Subscribe” from the left side menu.
- Select “Subscribe Today!”
- Complete the short online form with your contact and payment information to purchase the Individual Subscription
- Once the subscription is activated, complete the QM Instructional Designers Association Application found in MyQM > My Tools > Role Applications.
*To create a MyQM account, choose “I am new here” on the login page.
Looking for the Job Board?
ID-related job postings have moved to the QM IDA Listserv. Please see the information below on how to sign up and access the listserv. For non-members interested in sharing job postings with the QM IDA, please use our Google Form to submit your request.
Get Involved & Get Answers
QM IDA Twitter Chats
Be sure to follow @TheQMIDA. These monthly chats (#QMIDAChat) provide a forum for members to share thoughts and resources related to questions around using QM and creating a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement.
Date: Friday, March 12, 2021
Time: 12:00 p.m. ET
Topic: Digital Transformation: Increasing Learner Interaction and Engagement in Online, Remote, Blended, and Hybrid Courses
Questions:
Q1: What design best practices are being utilized to keep learners from turning on their cognitive "Auto Pilot" when taking online, remote and hybrid courses?
Q2: What are some effective learning activities that can be used to promote and increase the sense of a "Learning Community" in online courses?
Q3: One way to increase engagement and interaction is to solicit student feedback and iteratively adapt the course to the needs of the learners. How can continuous course improvement be implemented to gauge and measure student engagement and interaction in real-time?
Q4: There have been plenty of posts on social media from students about the anxiety they feel from working in breakout groups online. What are some ways to make breakout groups more comfortable for online learners?
Q5: What interactive, engagement activity would you like to bring to the online context?
QM IDA Learning Exchange Webinars
Join QM IDA members several times a year for free webinars delivered by your peers. Registration is limited to current members of the QM IDA. Recordings of past sessions can be accessed from the Reference Library in MyQM.
Open Design & Learner Equity: Using Open Pedagogy to Drive Course Innovation
Thursday, March 25, 2021 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern
As we assist faculty with designing online courses, often, the use of open educational materials is overlooked. This most often occurs because instructional designers are supposed to be focused on the design of a course while promoting QM principles, and not necessarily content. However, instructional designers are increasingly being asked for advice regarding a plethora of course materials. At the University of Akron, we have made part of our design process focus on ensuring that we design courses that are equitable. The cost of college textbooks and resources has increased by over 1600 percent in the last 30 years. To address this, we have launched an Affordable Learning Initiative that familiarizes faculty with content that's available under Creative Commons or from within our library. We have redesigned our entire course development process to build a team of librarians, instructional designers, multimedia producers, and educational technologists to surround our faculty with support in moving from paid content to open content. We will share our results on student success as well as what goes into forming a course development production team. In addition, we'll discuss why using the ID process is the perfect time to introduce the idea of going with open.
Learn how an Affordable Learning Initiative at a 4-year public unionized research institution successfully redesigned their course development model to promote the use of QM, open textbooks, and OER to drop course material costs down to zero.
Join the QM IDA Listserv
The QM IDA Listserv provides QM IDA members with a forum for networking, support and sharing resources related to the instructional design profession. Its primary purpose is to encourage collaboration, informal mentorship and communication related to instructional design resources.
Instructions for Joining the Listserv:
- Verify your membership in the QM IDA: Visit MyQM. After logging in, select My Tools in the secondary navigation menu. Then select “IDA Search.” Use your name or email address as the search criterion. The search should produce your information if your membership is current.
- Once your membership is verified, request to join the QM IDA Listserv by filling out the short QM IDA Listserv form.
- It will take approximately three days for your information to be included in the ListServ system. You will receive a notification from the Google Group when you’ve been added.
