Dear Colleagues,
Time is passing. It was a busy September and I missed getting a newsletter out to you during that month. I'm back….
Get feedback from your students
We're in week 7 of the semester. It's a good time to get some feedback from your students on their perspectives of your course. There are several ways to do this: the Blackboard Survey tool, pencil and paper, and my favorite - Qualtrics –the online survey software that UAA subscribes to. Google UAA surveys to find it if you forget to bookmark it.
Laura McGrath suggests the Stop-Start-Continue questions in her GradHacker article. There are just three questions:
· Identify one thing you'd like to stop doing in class.
· Identify one thing that you would like to start doing in class.
· Identify one thing that you would like to continue doing in class.
Determine what you will do, if anything, as a result of the survey. It's important to share the results with your class and any actions you may take/not take as a result of the survey.
Professional Learning Opportunities
Academic Innovations is focusing on Open Educational Resources during October. ·
CAFÉ offerings this month:
· October 9, 2015: Organize Your Digital World Lunch and Learn
· October 23 2015: Faculty Development Day –check out the range of offerings. Sign up and show up to network and learn. Free parking on the main campus on Fridays
Overview of the Quality Matters Rubric
In my last newsletter I gave brief overview of Quality Matters. I will continue in this e-missive by describing the Quality Matters Rubric. Updated regularly based on research, the rubric is used to assess the design of online courses. It is. There are eight general standards in the rubric:
1. Course Overview and Introduction
2. Learning Objectives (Competencies)
3. Assessment and Measurement
4. Instructional Materials
5. Course Activities and Learner Interaction
6. Course Technology
7. Learner Support
8. Accessibility and Usability
Each of these general standards has several specific standards. An important component of the rubric is alignment among specific standards:
Critical course components - Learning Objectives (2), Assessment and Measurement (3), Resources and Materials (4), Learner Engagement (5), and Course Technology (6) - work together to ensure that students achieve the desired learning outcomes. When aligned, each of these course components is directly tied to and supports the learning objectives. (from Quality Matters)
To me, this is the heart of good course design: aligning the assessments and learning activities to the course outcomes. I use Understanding by Design for this process and I just finished a webinar on assessment that used a table to help ensure that course outcomes/assessments/ and learning activities align.
Access to the rubric is via the QM website – sign up with your UAA email address. I am a certified Quality Matters peer reviewer – one of the first at UAA. Feel free to ask me questions or do an informal course review.
Next up: the QM course review.
Faculty Focus Article on Assessment
The assessment course that I referenced above focused on formative and summative assessment. Here is an article on assessment from Faculty Focus to get you thinking more deeply about how you assess and grade student learning and how assessment can be a tool for student engagement.
