Quality Matters

Quality matters in online education

IU is committed to adhering to the highest possible standards in online education—just as we do on our physical campuses.

That means ensuring that every course we offer provides value to our students. It means delivering content and assessment in ways that fit the medium and enhance student learning. And it means providing our faculty with peer-review opportunities that help them assess and fine tune their online classes.

IU Online Course Quality Guidelines and Resources

IU Online maintains a Course Quality Guidelines and Resources page which is a QM-aligned outline of essential elements an online instructor should check before opening online courses to students. It foucses on four essential aspects of course design:

  1. Course Orientation and Policies
  2. Organization
  3. Alignment
  4. Universal Design for Learning and Interaction

In these sections, instructors are prompted to check if they have included select features in their online course that add up to provide a quality learning environment to our online students.

This resource page is not comprehensive. It is a starting point for self-review and to facilitate discussion regarding quality assurance between you and your campus Center for Teaching and Learning. It can also be a first step towards preparing an onoine course for Quality Matters review and certification.

 

Harnessing the power of the Quality Matters Rubric

We have selected the Quality Matters Rubric to help ensure we meet our goals.

Quality Matters is a nationally recognized, faculty-centered quality assurance process for online and blended courses. Its peer-based approach to continuous improvement in online education and student learning enables us to create and deliver online courses that Indiana University can be proud to offer.

How Quality Matters can help you

The Quality Matters tools can help you through every stage of the course planning, design, delivery, and evaluation process.

You can take advantage of a wide range of tools, including:

  • Evidence-based rubrics for applying quality standards to course design
  • Professional development workshops and certification courses for instructors and online learning professionals
  • Faculty-centered, continuous improvement models for assuring the quality of online courses through peer review