WINTER 2012 - National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and ...

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Pamela A. Gibson and Pamela Trump Dunning instructional design staff for each college provide the foundation for successful course development and the freedom to take risks in applying new technological features in courses. PEER-REVIEW PROCESS Troy University instituted QAI in the fall of 2008, when it became a QM consortium member. Four times each year, courses are selected to be peerreviewed by a faculty member or team within a teaching discipline at the university. The department chairs, college deans, and associate deans select courses to be peer-reviewed. The courses selected are based on program standards within each discipline. Mature courses, those that have been taught at least one full academic year, qualify for review. A review may also be triggered by the introduction of new course textbooks, a new instructor, or if a program has a pending professional or accreditation review. Faculty may request that a course be reevaluated if its initial review was more than 3 years ago. The assessors are qualified, full-time faculty members who hold academic rank within the specific academic discipline and are appointed by their department chair. On occasion, a course requiring specialized expertise may call for an adjunct instructor to assess the course; however, the instructor must have at least one year of teaching experience with the university and have completed the training noted earlier. Assessors use the Quality Matters rubric and receive individualized training, depending on the knowledge level of the faculty member. To date, 12 faculty members have completed the QM Peer Reviewer Certification course. Sixty-five faculty members have completed the university training and conducted reviews that require, on average, 2 hours to complete. The QM rubric contains 40 different review standards. 1 These standards focus on course learning objectives, student assessment and evaluation, interactive strategies used between professor and student, learning resources and materials, learner support, and, most important, how the course is delivered in an Internet-based venue. Each standard is allotted a different score, depending on its significance to the course design, for a total of 85 points. According to the QM standards, a course must earn a total of 72 points (or an 85% pass rate) to qualify for QM recognition; of those points, 51 must be acquired by satisfying 17 essential standards (Fortune, 2008). The assessor enters the Bb course as an unidentified registered “guest.” Therefore, the instructor is aware that the course is being reviewed but does not know who is reviewing it. By 2010, over 240 courses university-wide had been the subject of review; 62% satisfied the standards set forth by QM (meeting the 85% threshold or above), and 38% were missing at least one essential standard (Fortune & Woods, 2010). As of July 2011, the number of courses reviewed has increased to 420+ course sections covering over 50% of all discipline areas within the five colleges (D. Fortune, personal communication, July 27, 2011). Of the 420+ courses, 80% successfully met the 85% standard. 212 Journal of Public Affairs Education
Creating Quality Online Course Design After two terms, the Quality Assurance office reviews the courses that do not meet the 85% standard. Reassessments have been completed in over 120 sections in the College of Arts & Sciences during the last 2½ years (D. Fortune, personal communication, August 11, 2011). The most common errors found in course reviews were (a) missing logistical elements such as the key required “start here” button in Bb providing a site map of the course, and (b) explicit statements supporting the university requirement that instructors respond to student inquiries within 24 hours on weekdays and 48 hours on weekends. However, the standard most consistently achieved in the course reviews was high engagement responses from faculty in the discussion board section of the course (D. Fortune, August 11, 2011). Faculty assessors note that as the courses themselves have grown with technological advancements and faculty training and expertise, so too, has the evaluation; the online evaluation form “is not just a check list regarding expectations for the course shell” (anonymous, August 26, 2011). The review begins by ensuring that the basic elements are present (requisite sites and hyperlinks, format and policies) and then provides opportunity to comment on key components of web-based learning. According to Stowers (1999), these key components for evaluating online instruction include the quality of course content, ease of navigation through the course, and the degree of participation and interaction among students. Once completed, reviews are disseminated among the college deans to assist them in providing feedback to the instructor. Instructors and assessors alike are constantly reminded in training and reviews that these critiques are not a component of instructor evaluations, nor are they designed to challenge the curriculum. The emphasis is on compliance with required course design elements and effective use of course tools to facilitate learning. Anecdotal evidence suggests the focus on course design is what makes faculty members willing and interested in becoming reviewers and having their courses reviewed. The QAI has gained widespread support and has resulted in an eTroy Faculty Expectations document. Built from the results of QM reviews, this document is provided to all online faculty to guide them in constructing online courses with consistently proven characteristics that enhance the learning experience for their students (see Appendix A for a sampling from the document). Some of those characteristics were discovered in the reviews conducted on MPA courses. IMPROVING OUR ONLINE COURSE DESIGN The introduction of QM to our MPA program curriculum design was an invitation to assess how current course delivery was meeting student needs and where there might be areas for improvement. This has resulted in some substantial improvements in the design of the university’s in-class and hybrid courses, primarily by doing the following: (a) tying course content to learning Journal of Public Affairs Education 213
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JPAE VOLUME 18 NUMBER 1 JOURNAL OF
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Journal of Public Affairs Education
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FROM THE EDITOR In the symposium in
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NASPAA Presidential Address Annual
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Leading by Example: Modeling Global
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FROM THE GUEST EDITOR FROM THE GUES
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FROM THE GUEST EDITOR A SYMPOSIUM I
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on other fronts, certainly it can h
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Picasso, P. (1937). Guernica. Pictu
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A View from the 50th Street Gate on
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Reflections of a Working-Class Acad
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Reflections of a Working Class Acad
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Reflections of a Working Class Acad
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Class Rooms Kenneth Oldfield Univer
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Class Rooms although I did, but not
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Class Rooms GRADUATE SCHOOL I was u
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Class Rooms the odds this appointee
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Class Rooms The Great Leveler, too
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Class Rooms of higher learning and
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ook (Oldfield & Johnson, 2009). The
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Didactic Changes Class Rooms Pedago
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Admittedly, it will be difficult to
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hooks, b. (2000). Where we stand: C
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Shaw, G. B. (1928). The intelligent
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What’s a Girl Like You Doing in a
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What’s a Girl Like You For exampl
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What’s a Girl Like You and operat
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What’s a Girl Like You captured t
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What’s a Girl Like You full-blown
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What’s a Girl Like You inside). I
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What’s a Girl Like You and collea
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What’s a Girl Like You toward ser
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Blue-Collar Teaching in a White-Col
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Blue-Collar Teaching Half of my fam
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Blue-Collar Teaching from physics.
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Blue-Collar Teaching lifelong dream
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Blue-Collar Teaching Before him, in
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Blue-Collar Teaching One may argue
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Blue-Collar Teaching graduation in
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Blue-Collar Teaching advantages oth
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Carrizales, T. (2010). Exploring cu
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Oldfield, K. (2010). Socioeconomic
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Moving Forward by Looking Back Gary
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Moving Forward My father married my
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Moving Forward became apparent that
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Moving Forward to Duane, because he
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Moving Forward by this contaminant.
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Moving Forward quite by chance to b
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Moving Forward Federalist 51 detail
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Moving Forward their profession, in
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Moving Forward as the study shows,
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REFERENCES Ashwander v. Tennessee V
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics:
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Many researchers have explored the
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LITERATURE REVIEW Techniques in Tea
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics b
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics T
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics l
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics i
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Table 1. Downloads of Papers at Sel
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Figure 2. Expanded Model of Researc
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics o
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Figure 3. Expanded Model of Researc
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics L
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics o
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Felbinger, C. L., Holzer, M., & Whi
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Snee, R. D. (1993). What’s missin
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Are They Connected? Exploring Acade
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Exploring Academic and Social Netwo
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Figure 2. Career Advice Network Fig
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Table 1. Descriptive Statistics of
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network density, and network recipr
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Figure 5. Academic, Career Advice,
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Open Access Digital Repository: Sha
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Sharing Student Research with the W
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