Quality

Quality/Assessment (20)

This term relates to the evaluation of the quality of the online courses. This term is distinct from the assessment of online teaching found in the Evaluation terms (addressed in the next section). The AAUP recommends that courses be evaluated for quality. Quality is a permissive term for bargaining.

Examples

Observation. Assessment is a word frequently heard in higher education circles. However, institutions still struggle with how to effectively evaluate the quality of distance education courses. This is particularly true when the administrators who do the evaluating are completely unfamiliar with distance courses, which is often the case.

Excellent tools for evaluating distance courses do exist. One example is the Quality Matters Rubric. It is based on extensive research into pedagogy and best practices in distance instruction (Quality Matters, 2008). The Quality Matters Rubric is based on the belief that that a quality course is indicative of quality instruction. Community colleges throughout the country have adopted or adapted the Quality Matters rubric or similar tools to uniformly and fairly evaluate the quality of online courses.