October 2014

Ron Legon Delivers State of QM Address During 6th Annual Conference

"Quality Matters is continuing to grow and strengthen its stature as the leading quality assurance resource for online course design," said Ron Legon, Ph.D., Executive Director, Quality Matters, during the State of QM address delivered during the 6th Annual QM Conference. "Our professional development offerings continue to expand, and have reached
more than 35,000 faculty and academic professionals."

Dr. Legon also pointed to "a steadily increasing number and variety of third-party providers in higher education turning to QM to improve and validate their products" as cause for celebration, considering that "public acceptance of online learning is greater than ever."

The introduction of a flexible tool, My Custom Reviews

(MyCR) allows schools to combine QM standards with other institutional standards to build unique new rubrics.

Read more about the state of QM.

Welcome Back from Your 6th Annual Conference Voyage

Thanks for joining us on the Good Ship QM during the 6th Annual Conference! Thanks to you, the Conference was a success! The camaraderie among the QM community and willingness to share best practices touching on both design and delivery were some of the Conference highlights. We heard amazing stories from QM subscribers and shared conversations that will help us further online learning initiatives as we return to our institutions and organizations. We hope to have more exciting opportunities for sharing, learning and networking next year in San Antonio!

Making a Difference for Students Awards

Congratulations to the 2014 Making a Difference for Students Award winners. The awards recognize the efforts of individuals and institutions that exemplify QM's focus on student learning.

Outstanding Impact by an Individual: Reba-Anna Lee, Marist College

(l to r) Christine Voelker, Reba-Anna Lee, Melissa Poole

Outstanding Impact by an Organization: New Mexico State University - Alamogordo

(l to r) Christine Voelker, Melissa Poole, Dr. Ryan Carstens, Sherrell Wheeler, Kathy Roark-Diehl, Dr. Christine Trapp, Gary Bond

Patti Huber, Madison Area Technical College, saw clearly why her time at sea with QM was so valuable.

Jeff Kaplan, Director, Partner Relations, ProctorFree writes that community was an important element of the Conference.

Keith O'Neal, who tweets at @iTeachLipscomb, wrote about all the Twitter activity that occurred at the #qmconf hashtag during the Conference.

Don't forget to take a look at the Conference keynote, presentations and selfie contest entries!

Professional Development Can Improve Your Courses

If you are an educator interested in learning more about online teaching and improving course accessibility, QM's professional development workshops offer a number of opportunities to do just that. Two-week, online, facilitated workshops are available at convenient times for you. Register now for the following workshops:

Addressing Accessibility and Usability (Standard 8) (start date 10/23) provides detailed information about accessibility, usability, readability and how to design courses with all these topics in mind. Information is provided on Universal Design for Learning, challenges learners may encounter, creating accessible content and designing courses that can be easily navigated.

Connecting Learning Objectives Assessments icon

Connecting Learner Objectives and Assessments (Standards 2 & 3) (start date 10/30) helps participants draw connections between learning objectives and the assessments that measure those learning objectives. You'll also receive tools that will help you make those connections more apparent to students.

Celebrate National Distance Learning Week with QM

We're excited to celebrate National Distance Learning Week (NDLW) beginning Monday, November 10! This year we're Helping Learners Be Successful.

We're kicking off the week by introducing the all-new eLearning Marketplace with a free webinar on Monday, November 10. The 1/2 hour webinar is at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. ET.

The eLearning Marketplace is a free, searchable database for the QM community. You'll learn how to search for and add tools and products you use and might recommend to others.

We're also offering three low-cost one-hour web conferencing workshops during NDLW. These highly interactive sessions offer opportunities to create takeaways you'll use right away. Each of the three workshops is $25 for subscribers and $40 for non-subscribers.

Tuesday, November 11 will feature "Communicating New Policies for Online Learners", where you will create a netiquette policy and an attendance policy, and locate the privacy policy for a tool you're currently using in your online or blended course.

Register for the 10 a.m. ET or 6 p.m. ET session.

Wednesday, November 12 will feature "Helping Learners Track Their Progress", where you will explore how to add activities to your courses, enabling learners to take ownership of their learning. You'll create a "practice" activity you can use immediately in your online or blended course.

On Thursday, November 13, we'll present "Creating Captioned Videos", where you'll explore how to use YouTube and Amara to quickly and easily add closed captioning to videos and animations.

Join us as we celebrate the growth and accomplishments in distance education during NDLW November 10-14!

Southeast Missouri State University to Require QM Certification for Online Courses

Southeast Missouri State University will now require its online courses to be QM-Certified, according to a statement released by the university.

Southeast Missouri State University's Board of Regents affirmed a schedule that calls for its Wintersession 2016 (December 2015) and online Summer 2016 courses to be QM-Certified. All online courses from Wintersession 2017 (December 2016) forward must be QM-Certified.

"Our goal is to only have internally Quality Matters-reviewed courses offered during Wintersession 2016, and that all online courses from December 2016 forward will be Quality Matters reviewed," said Kenneth W. Dobbins, President, Southeast Missouri State University. "We are confident we can achieve this academic program quality goal."