QM Standards Unit Introduction

The Quality Matters™ Higher Education Rubric, 2011-2013 Edition

Introduction to the Rubric

The Quality Matters (QM) Rubric is intended to be used to evaluate online and hybrid courses that are "mature," that is, courses that have already been taught for a couple of terms. We are going to use it for this course as a development tool. The rubric lists 8 General Standards with 41 specific standards (or criteria) organized under each of the general standards. Please save or print the one-page version of the rubric below, and refer to it for the rest of this introduction. This one-page rubric and the 22-page annotated version of the rubric are available in the Carmen Content, in the Resources module. Note that you can view all PDF documents presented in these SoftChalk lessons as they appear below, or you can save them to your computer and view them that way. Use the icons along the top of the PDF frame to select various actions.

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.

About the QM Standards Unit in this course . . . .

Please locate the Annotated QM Rubric in the Resources section of our course content in Carmen (near the bottom of the list). It is long, 22 pages, but you may consider it worthwhile to save and/or print that document because you will be referring to it often during this course.

For our QM Standards unit, I will present each of the 8 general (or broad) standards in a separate SoftChalk lesson. Each of the specific standards is on a separate page in the lesson.

• You should begin by reading the broad standard first.

• Then, read the specific standards. Each specific standard has its own page in the lesson. Note the relative importance of the standard you are studying. Standard 1.1 is considered by QM to be "essential" and is worth 3 points. That means that is must be met (at the 85% level) by a course under review for that course to meet QM standards overall in a formal review.

• Next, read the Stated plainly section. These sections are my own words and not those of QM. It is sometimes helpful to explain in "plain English" what the standard means to a course developer. Since the QM rubric is written with course reviewers in mind and not course developers, this Stated plainly section puts the standard in simple terms, as I see the standard, for people who are developing courses.

• The next item on each page and for each standard is Why does it matter? This section is my statement of why the standard is important to student success in any online course.

• Next, you'll find the official QM annotation of the standard. These are quoted from the annotated version of the QM Rubric and should not be copied or shared outside of QM-subscribing institutions. I've indented all text that is quoted directly from the rubric and I've entered the annotations in brown font to help all of us remember which pieces are directly quoted and which pieces are my own words.

• The last section you'll need to read is How have others met this standard? The most common request I get from instructors and course designers is examples of how others have designed online courses to meet a particular standard. None of these standards are as difficult to meet as they may seem! You'll see and read about examples, some simple and others more complex, that allow a course to meet the QM standards and earn the QM seal.

• And finally, at the bottom of most specific standard pages, you'll find a self-check quiz which gives you an opportunity to check your own understanding. The quiz questions should be visible, but if they aren't, click on the icon to open them. It is important to read the hints and feedback associated with each question because there are important tips there. A grade is not recorded in the Carmen gradebook for the quizzes in Softchalk, but they are good preparation for the quiz in Carmen that *will* be graded.

In summary

To reiterate:

Credit is not earned through the self-check quizzes in Softchalk. You must complete the QM Standards Unit Quiz in Carmen for a potential 50 points from the entire Quality Matters module.

You should go ahead and get started with the QM Standards Unit now, starting with Standard 1 in Carmen. But first, just in case you were curious . . . .

Where did the standards come from?

Every two years, the Quality Matters Rubric undergoes a revision based on an extensive literature review. You will not be asked to cite supporting research for this course, but the supporting studies and their conclusions are summarized in the document below. The Why does it matter? sections for each standard do not refer to the research specifically, but they do in a more general way, and you can find the specific research that supports each standard in the document.

This document is also available in Carmen under Resources in Content.