Faculty Details and Background

Fall 2022

A total of 21 faculty members taught online courses in CBE in Fall 2022. Out of these, 5 (23.8%) had received some QA-related training for teaching online or hybrid classes. Details regarding the different types of trainings completed by faculty are shown in the table below (note that some faculty completed multiple trainings):

Currently, there are no QM-certified online courses or Master QM Reviewer in CBE. As to the number of QA trainings per instructor, 3 out of the 6 faculty members with QA-related experience had only one training, while the other 3 had completed two different trainings.

Spring 2023

A total of 44 faculty members taught online courses in CBE in Spring 2023. Nine (20.5%) of these faculty members had some QA-related training. Details below:

Student Outcomes

Fall 2022

Overall, course outcomes are better in course sections taught by instructors with some QA-related training (as seen by the lower average percentage of repeatable grades and higher course GPA). Considering some of the underserved groups separately, such a positive impact of QA training was observed in all cases, including underrepresented (UR) students, Pell Grant recipients, and first-generation students. These results are summarized in the following table.

All the results for the repeatable grades were statistically significant at the 5% significance level except for the Pell grant recipient subgroup (p-values < 0.05). The average course GPAs, on the other hand, were significantly higher for Pell recipients and first-generation students who were enrolled in online courses taught by QA-trained faculty members than those enrolled in other course sections. Note that the sample sizes were very small in all the cases, hence the scope of generalization of these results is very limited beyond the current sample.

Spring 2023

Overall course outcomes are better in course sections taught by instructors with some QA-related training (as seen by the lower average percentage of repeatable grades and higher average course GPAs). Considering some of the underserved groups separately, such a positive impact of QA-training was observed in all cases, including underrepresented (UR) students, Pell grant recipients, and first-generation college students. These results are summarized in the following table. 

None of the results were statistically significant at the 5% level except for the overall percentages of repeatable grades (p-values < 0.05). Note that, the sample sizes were very small in all the cases, hence the scope of generalization of these results is very limited beyond the current sample.