How does the rubric work in a review?
(Refer to the one-page rubric on Page 1 of this lesson.) Each of the 8 general (or broad) standards is listed in red in the left column. The 41 specific standards are listed in the middle column. The point value for each of the 41 standards is listed in the right column. The specific standards are classified as "essential (3 points)," "very important (2 points)," or "important (1 point)." To meet standards in a formal, official QM review of an online course, the course must meet all 21 essential standards (essential standards are those worth 3 points) *and* earn a total of 81 of the 95 total points available on the rubric. (81 points is equal to 85% of the 95 points.)
When a reviewer evaluates a course, he or she will decide if a standard is met at the 85% level. That is, a course does not have to be perfect with regard to the standard being evaluated, nor does it have to be perfect overall. A course will "meet standards" and earn the QM seal if it is good enough at the 85% level. Each specific standards is deemed as either "met" or "not met" by QM reviewers; a standard is never partially met and does not earn partial points. It always earns either the full 1, 2, or 3 points that the standard is worth, or it does not meet the standard and earns 0 points.
Our use of the rubric in this course is limited to referring to the standards as guidelines or benchmarks that our courses should meet. We will not worry too much about formal QM reviews during this course, but I thought you might want to know briefly how a review would work, just in case you would like to put your course through a QM review after you teach it for a term or two.
If you are interested in learning more about QM and formal and informal reviews of existing courses, I have a document I would like to share with you. This is entirely optional information and not required reading for this class, but it is available for you to use and share if you wish.
The Annotated Quality Matters Rubric
The one-page version of the rubric is available on QM's website. You must create an account on the QM website to access it. Anyone can create an account, but please use your OSU email address if you decide to create one so that you'll have the privileges that our OSU institutional membership gives you. However, there is a 22-page annotated version of the rubric that QM makes available only to QM subscribers. I will not include that in this SoftChalk lesson because of QM copyright rules. However, I put a copy of both the one-page and the annotated rubric in our Carmen course under Content > Resources. Please do not share this copy of the rubric outside of Ohio State faculty and staff. It is for you to work with for this course and in the process of working for Ohio State only.