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

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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 180
as standard protocol to any faculty member that requests a course site for an online course. As the guidelines are reviewed, the process will only improve in efficiency and promote even higher standards of online courses. Following the recommended guidelines is the only manner in which a new online course can be developed under the college’s mini-grant process and successfully complete the process for faculty funding. What are the results/measurable outcomes? As of August 2006, 26 courses have been granted the ICC quality seal of approval of the ~145 total online course sections currently offered. Eight (8) courses are pending completion of reviews as a result of the summer term. Faculty members have made six (6) requests for course reviews in the fall 2006 semester. The six (6) requests for quality course reviews will be honored, with the current standards. The college will then revise the process and guidelines based on feedback and use to improve the efficiency of the process and still maintain the quality standards. Student Success rate studies are tracked and monitored for all courses offered each semester and also by the various instructional modes. Online courses have increasingly improved their success rate college-wide over the past few years from an average of 61–64% to an average of 70% for the fall of 2005 as compared to 70% for in-person courses. Studies have not yet been implemented to show the difference between success rates in quality approved online courses and those online courses that have not completed the rigorous. Contact Information Name: Janice M. Kinsinger Email: jkinsinger@icc.edu Phone: (309) 694-5758 181
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