At UND, ‘Quality Matters’ in course design
New course-design platform affords more objectivity, incorporates best practices, UND instructional designers say
As UND shifts toward a new method of course design and verification, staff representing the University’s Teaching, Transformation & Development Academy (TTaDA) believe it will lead to improved learning outcomes, while also providing a more objective metric for assessing its curriculum.
To achieve this, UND has adopted Quality Matters, a nonprofit that Bridget Brooks and Katie Benton, instructional designers with TTaDA, called “the gold standard” for course design. According to the organization’s website, more than 1,500 institutions representing 30 countries are members.
Brooks and Benton also serve as UND’s Quality Matters coordinators, responsible for implementing the platform’s rollout. Specifically, this involves facilitating communication, managing professional development, championing the course review process and staying connected to other institutions using Quality Matters.
The Quality Matters higher education rubric stipulates eight general standards for course design — governing everything from course materials, learning objectives and accessibility — along with 44 review standards. Brooks concedes that implementing Quality Matters may seem overwhelming for instructors, but offered reassurance that it will be rolled out gradually.
“We’re implementing it very slowly,” she said. “We have a five- or six-year plan to get it rolling across campus, where we’ll start to change the culture of how instructors view their courses. It’s researched, proven best practices.”
Brooks added that Quality Matters’ method of course evaluation — dubbed “triangulation” due to a panel of three instructional designers independently assessing each course — will offer a more diverse array of expert perspectives than the previous method.
“It will reduce the subjectivity of how we’re looking at courses,” she said. “We are also completing research now and benchmarking along the way, so that we can look at the data and say, ‘this is the difference that we made.’”
Another advantage of adopting Quality Matters, Brooks said, is how its objectives often run parallel to accrediting bodies such as the Higher Learning Commission.
A major component of Quality Matters is providing professional development opportunities for faculty. Brooks, whose purview as an instructional designer is at UND’s College of Engineering & Mines, said new faculty members are seeking out resources from TTaDA to improve their courses.
Later this month, TTaDA will be hosting two three-day workshops for faculty members. The first session will be held May 21-23, and the second session will take place May 28-30.
Courses certified by Quality Matters also benefit students — by providing a roadmap of objectives to be completed, eliminating any ambiguity regarding their relevance.
“It shows the student why they are doing an activity, and why it’s important,” Brooks said. “There is no busy work involved.”
Both Brooks and Benton said feedback regarding Quality Matters has been overwhelmingly positive across UND’s colleges — evidenced through a satisfaction survey completed by 120 faculty members. Still, they said, fully implementing its standards is a work in progress.
“One thing we really want to emphasize is continuous improvement,” Benton said. “We’re not going for 100 percent at the gate; we’re seeking improvement as we progress through semesters and beyond. Things are always evolving, and we want to make sure we’re evolving as an institution.”
Brooks wants faculty to know that TTaDA is a resource that is always at their disposal — with staff specializing in all areas of Quality Matters’ rubric and standards.
“We’ve done the heavy lifting, found the best practices and are sharing them with faculty,” she said. “They can reach out to our instructional designers — each one of whom specializes in something a little bit different — so we can all come together to determine how to help them.”
Those interested in learning more about the course review process, and Quality Matters’ rubric and verification mark, can find more information by visiting the program’s website.
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