Empowering Excellence through Humanizing your Quality Standards

Concurrent Session 5

Brief Abstract

Explore how a large public university weaves its quality standards through the course development process, how instructional designers humanize the rubric to help faculty engage with the concepts effectively, and how quality data is captured and used to drive strategic improvement on a broader scale

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Karen Watte, Oregon State University

Karen Watte serves as the Director of Course Development and Training with Oregon State University Ecampus where she coordinates a team of instructional designers, multimedia developers, and faculty development specialists to support faculty and departments in designing their courses for online delivery. She is involved in initiatives focused on improving quality in both online course design and teaching. Her areas of focus include faculty professional development, organizational behavior, and online program management. Karen began her career in higher education as a business and computer systems instructor and has been working in the field of online teaching and learning since 2008. She holds a Master’s of Business Administration from Oregon State University.

Co-presenter: Cyndie Mutka McCarley, Oregon State University - Ecampus

Additional Authors

Extended Abstract

 How does an institution effectively weave quality throughout its entire course development process and how can this effort drive continuous quality improvement over time? In this session we will explore how a large R1 public institution with a centralized distance education unit approaches quality from the initial conversation with faculty to the launch of each new course or program.  We will explain how quality standards are introduced and integrated at every level of the course development cycle. We will demonstrate how our use of quality standards have evolved over time and illustrate the touch points that faculty have with these concepts during their course development work. Learn how our instructional designers expertly tailor their conversations with faculty to increase understanding of critical quality standards and how their approach humanizes this in a way that helps even the most reticent faculty engage with the concepts effectively. Finally, learn how we capture quality data about each course development and how this data is analyzed for use in strategic quality improvement on a broader scale.