Title of Effective Practice: - California Postsecondary Education ...

Direct Connection to Policy Area 5 of The Illinois Commitment
To Offer Quality Online Courses at Illinois Central College
Illinois Central College
What issue or need is addressed by the effective practice?
The purpose of this project was to establish standards to assess the quality of online courses offered at Illinois
Central College.
Description of the effective practice:
The ICC Quality Online Course initiative began in spring 2002 with an ICC Process Management Team. The
team was a spin-off team of a team previously established to focus on improving the way ICC online courses
were marketed to prospective students. The new team was charged with the task of developing a process by
which quality was measured in online courses. The assumption the team held was that the ability to “certify”
online courses met or exceeded high quality standards would lead to recruiting and retaining online students in a
competitive market. The quality team was comprised of five faculty, two administrators and an instructional
technologist. The team met for the first time in fall 2002 and the Process Management report (ICC Quality
Online Course Guidelines) was presented in November 2003. The guidelines are published on the ICC
Instructional Innovation Website (www.icc.edu/iifd).
The guidelines include operational definitions; use of Blackboard, the college’s designated course management
system; baseline technology skills for faculty teaching online; the application of ICC’s Core Values to online
learning for faculty and students and details for developing effective online course syllabi, calendars, coursespecific
policies and procedures. The Guidelines also organize the components of an online course into the
following areas: Introduction and Orientation, Course Procedures, Course Information, Course Materials, The
Online Learning Community (general communication, group interaction and asynchronous communication),
Assessment and Evaluation. The guidelines provide, for each component of the online course, a “baseline”
description of a quality online course and “advanced” description to allow for measurement and
acknowledgment of above-baseline practices.
The guidelines are currently being used in The Blackboard Institute, a comprehensive faculty development
experience for developing technical and pedagogical skills for online faculty; individual one-on-one training
with faculty; voluntary self-assessment by faculty; in place of a “classroom observation” of a traditional class
for the purpose of faculty performance review and evaluation (all Associate Deans were trained on the use of the
Guidelines) and as new online courses are developed under a mini-grant contract proposed by the faculty
member developing the course. Courses are reviewed by the guidelines and the original grant application before
mini-grant funds are paid. Courses are reviewed by an instructional technologist from an instructional design
perspective and by an Associate Dean to review course content and measure rigor of the course. Generally this
process has been completed with individual reviews by the instructional technologist and the Associate Dean
and then a conference is conducted with the instructional technologist, the Associate Dean and the online faculty
member. Once the review conference is completed and any suggestions are satisfactorily implemented, the
online course is granted the quality seal of approval (placed on the course banner). This entire review process
has proved very beneficial in familiarizing all Associate Deans and faculty to the standards that make a quality
online course. However, the process has been very labor intensive for the one full-time instructional
technologist to keep pace with the numerous requests. Thus, the quality course initiative, guidelines and
processes are scheduled to go into revision in the fall 2006 semester. The revision process will take into
consideration Illinois Online Network’s Quality Online Course Initiative Standards for Online Courses released
at the Faculty Summer Institute in May 2006 and utilize faculty that have already completed the approval
process with one or more online courses. The revision process will attempt to include the original
administrators, faculty and professional staff who participated in documenting the original quality guidelines.
Updated guidelines and a review process with improved efficiency are expected in spring 2007.
How does this practice achieve sustainability?
The entire quality online review process has educated and familiarized the college’s eight (8) Associate Deans
and over twenty (25) online faculty to the quality online standards in a practical and collegial manner. This
translates into faculty sharing their strategies with other faculty. The quality online guidelines are now provided
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