Local POCR Certification

The following elements may not occur sequentially: many of these occur simultaneously; however, the Capstone process will be the final element of this process.

Element: Buy In

Reach out to the appropriate stakeholders at your college, like Academic Senate, Administrative Cabinet, appropriate VPs, Instructional Design and/or Accessibility Staff, etc. Having support from your college like an Academic Senate resolution, appropriate committee support, etc, will ensure that the POCR process at your college has a strong foundation.

Element: Developing your Review Team 

When developing and selecting your POCR team, consider the following: 

Anyone conducting peer reviews for a college must currently be faculty (adjunct or full-time) AND satisfactorily complete the CVC @ONE POCR course. This is a free six-week, facilitated online course that will teach members of your POCR team how to use the CVC Online Course Design Rubric to review an online course.
NOTE: With local Academic Senate approval, instructional designers and/or Deans may participate as reviewers. 

important: To register for the POCR course, contact your college's POCR Lead. They will have the registration links for the current courses. If your POCR Lead does not have the registration links, have them contact Xochitl Tirado (xtirado@cvc.edu). 

Element: Establish your college's Course Review Process 

Each campus is free to set up a review process that fits the campus culture and the needs of the faculty. However, there are a few requirements that every college should follow if the ultimate goal is to have courses officially recognized by CVC as “Quality Reviewed” in the Course Exchange/Cross-Enrollment platform:

• Review of courses is peer-to-peer, i.e. reviews are done by trained faculty Peer Reviewers, and involve more than a single reviewer determining the alignment of a given course.

NOTE: Instructional designers and/or Deans may serve as reviewers with the approval of the local Academic Senate. 

• Reviewers are trained through the @ONE POCR Course.

• Reviews are conducted and documented using the CVC Course Design Rubric. A review for accessibility must be included.

• The last step of the alignment process is how your team will "close the loop". This means a process to verify the fixes by the instructor to align the course.

• Reviewers engage in regular norming and training on the use of the Rubric and best practices in online course design.
  The CVC sponsors quarterly norming sessions for reviewers. Once Local POCR Certified it is recommended your college have at least two representatives at each norming session and that each reviewer attends two of the sessions per year in order to maintain your college's Local POCR Certified status.

Element: Prepare and Train Faculty

Faculty preparation is key to the success of your Local POCR efforts. 

Faculty who understand and can implement the skills and principles of effective online course design will be better able to develop a course that meets all alignment points in the CVC Course Design Rubric. You're welcome to adopt and adapt any of the @ONE courses (search "CVC adopt" in the Canvas Commons) to meet your faculty's training needs (be sure to include a strong foundation in accessibility!). This faculty preparation will also make your reviewers' job easier when the courses being submitted are already a close match to the guidelines of the CVC Rubric.

Another area of preparation to consider is making sure instructors understand what is involved in going through the review process itself. We encourage you to offer a clear description of the process, what will be expected of the instructor, what they can expect from your review team, time commitment, etc. This might be a short informational webinar or a written description on a webpage. 

Element: Submit the Local POCR Certification Application

• Read more about the application.

• When your college is ready to begin, complete and submit the Local POCR Certification application.

Final Element: Capstone Process- Begin Reviewing & Aligning 3 Courses

NOTE: If you have not contacted CVC's POCR Lead, Xochitl Tirado (xtirado@cvc.edu), contact her before beginning the Capstone process. 

•  Read more about the Capstone Process.

Celebrate your status as a POCR Certified Campus

Yay! (cue confetti) Three courses are fully aligned and verified!

As mentioned above, it is recommended your college have at least two representatives at each norming session and that each reviewer attends two of the sessions per year in order to maintain your college's Local POCR Certified status.

To clarify, only the CVC can issue the Quality Reviewed badge through our cvc.edu Exchange/Cross-Enrollment system. This is why you will continue to submit the information for each course (without any rubric or review from OEI) through the updated form on your Dashboard even after achieving Fully Certified status.

We strongly encourage all colleges to engage with us in becoming designated Home and Teaching College in the Course Finder. (This will involve your IT folks.) Please contact support@cvc.edu to get started.