24th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning
For more resources: http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference
Quality From the Ground up:
The Course Design Team
Gary Greenberg, Greater Dayton Public Television
and The Ohio State University
Joeann Humbert, Director of Online Learning,
Rochester Institute of Technology
Higher education in the U.S. is experiencing a wave of distance education activity, with nearly twenty
percent of all U.S. higher education students taking at least one online course in the fall of 2006 (Allen &
Seaman, 2007). Accompanying this activity is a renewed concern on the part of distance learning
administrators and professional associations about the overall quality of these efforts. This paper is
concerned with the faculty, administrators, instructional designers, and technologists who create a quality
course experience. In particular, how do these crucial players: create the notion of quality; build and
nurture this definition within a design team; and determine how creativity and innovation proceed in the
course design process?
Quality in online education—and higher education generally—is a slippery concept to define. As Swedish
researchers Michael Christie and Tom Stehlik pointed out, “Quality as ‘excellence or goodness’ was the
definition preferred by philosophers. ‘Fitness for purpose’ is the definition preferred by business people”
(Christie & Stehlik, 2007). As their statement makes clear, definitions of quality depend upon who is
doing the defining—it is a socially constructed concept.
In distance education circles, definitions of quality often are extrinsic or intrinsic. Extrinsic definitions are
frequently described as standards or criteria. Familiar ones domestically include the American Distance
Educational Consortium’s “ADEC Guiding Principles for Distance Learning”; American Council on
Education’s “Guiding Principles for Distance Learning in a Learning Society”; Instructional
Telecommunications Council’s “Distance Education Guidelines for Good Practice”; WCET’s “Guidelines
for the Evaluation of Electronically Offered Degree and Certificate Programs” ‘ and Sloan-C’s “Five
Pillars of Quality.” Intrinsic definitions include the notions of quality developed by distance education
teams, as well as peer-oriented course design reviews such as those offered by the Quality Matters project
(MarylandOnline, 2006). Intrinsic definitions tend to be formative rather than summative in nature, and
focused on program and course design practices.
Quality and Teams
The connection between quality and teams in the workplace is an old one, with the work of the Japanese
quality movement—its “quality circles”—and of Edward Deming as notable examples (Sherry, 2003).
More recently, Finnish research Yrjö Engeström has reaffirmed the centrality of cooperative work teams
in driving innovation and learning in the workplace (Engeström, 2008). That view is appropriate to the
study of distance education design teams, particularly as they are poised to make important contributions
to the digital economy.
Rochester Institute of Technology’s Online Learning Department in upstate New York, with its 450
annual course offerings, is a good place to examine distance education teams and their role in and
responsibility for course quality. RIT’s Online Learning Department supports the academic mission by
providing comprehensive support services for students in online courses and programs and by helping
faculty find innovative and effective ways to use technology in their online as well as their campus
courses. RIT has forty-nine online graduate, undergraduate, and certificate programs and has been
Copyright 2008 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
Duplication or redistribution prohibited without written permission of the
author(s) and the Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning
1
24th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning
For more resources: http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference
involved in online course development and support of distance education courses for more than twentyfive years.
Drawing on expertise in both technology and pedagogy, Online Learning staff assist faculty with all
aspects of course design, help colleges and departments in online program development, examine the
effect of technology on teaching and learning, and share information across the institute about effective
practices. In addition, The National Technical Institute for the Deaf, one of RIT’s eight colleges, is
located on the campus. Many of the 1200 NTID students take courses with hearing peers. As a result,
Online Learning has developed special expertise in course design for students with disabilities.
Online Learning’s ability to support quality course design depends on the following:
•
•
•
•
A knowledgeable team which includes instructional designers, technologists, media
developers, a curriculum specialist, and support staff who have in depth experience in the
effective use of technology in teaching;
A successful model using a coaching relationship with faculty which includes an
introduction to the concepts of teaching online, shared best practices, technology training,
and on-going support;
A strong commitment to exemplary service and a solid infrastructure to support the
technology;
Faculty who are willing to work in a team approach to course development.
The RIT course design team normally includes an instructional designer, who will assess the course
design needs and coordinate the appropriate staff to assist in the process. This might include
technologists who assist with the technology recommendation and training, media developers for course
content, a curriculum specialist to advise on copyright clearance, publisher resources and ADA
compliance, and support staff who both train and advise on tools and student support.
Faculty are ultimately responsible for the final decisions on course delivery and format and can choose
the level and amount of support they want in developing their online course.
In a traditional course design model, the instructional designer is responsible for the development and
course template structure and faculty are content experts. RIT avoids using this model for several reasons.
Most faculty design and teach their own courses, and want the same control over online courses as they
have in the classroom. In some cases, lead faculty do design courses that will be later taught by adjuncts
or other FT faculty, but the course is usually first taught by the original faculty. Because of this, most
faculty prefer to make the decisions about courses. Design staff recognize that there is no one model for
quality courses, so there are opportunities for faculty to experiment and choose custom approaches.
Quality course design is a result of credible and thoughtful choices based on knowledge of best practices,
the course content, and faculty comfort and experience with the technology.
As a service unit to the institute, Online Learning has no governing authority over course format and
delivery. In the beginning years, there was much discussion and hope that the unit would have
requirements that held courses to a standard model of design and delivery. It rarely is discussed now and
it is obvious faculty see Online Learning as a location on campus that provides partnership support for
sound pedagogical course design and effective practices with technology.
Creating Quality Courses
In addition to the experience and knowledge of the staff, RIT’s approach to quality course design is based
on a fundamental belief in constructivist learning and documents such as the AAHE “Seven Principles for
Copyright 2008 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
Duplication or redistribution prohibited without written permission of the
author(s) and the Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning
2
24th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning
For more resources: http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference
Good Practice in Undergraduate Education” by Chickering and Gamson (Chickering, 1991) and the
“Community of Inquiry Model” developed by Garrison and Anderson (Garrison and Archer, 2007).
Online Learning has developed several options for faculty creating online courses:
Individual Training
The course development process may be a series of individual meetings. These meetings can include faceto-face training with an instructional designer. Beginning faculty really appreciate the opportunity to see
other faculty course examples as a way to compare and formulate their own course design. Several
faculty have given Online Learning permission to use their courses as models in this way.
Essentials Course
The Essentials of Online Teaching—a three-week fully online course for RIT instructors new to teaching
online—launched in fall quarter 2007. The course simulates what it's like for students taking classes
online, complete with quizzes, discussions, assignments, and grades. It's open to RIT instructors with little
to no online teaching experience (who have taught less than three online courses) and runs in the sixth
through eighth week of the quarter. Using RIT's myCourses course management system, the course is
conducted entirely online. "It's essentially a sequence of interactive online activities that replicates a real
online course, with online teaching as its subject matter," said Michael Starenko, Online Learning
instructional designer.
Partner Projects With Faculty
A core component of our mission encourages the partnering with faculty on emerging technologies or
instructional strategies, assessment of the experience, and dissemination of the results to the broader
community. This structure promotes and encourages innovation and has included projects in areas such as
Blended Learning, Student Response Systems, Wikis, Second Life and Tablet PCs. In 2007, Online
Learning launched the Emerging Technology Partnership (ETP) program. This program has allowed
Online Learning to work side-by-side with faculty to create innovative teaching and learning tools.
Recognizing Quality Courses and Effective Teaching
Recognition strategies provide an opportunity to support and publicize the efforts of faculty and allow the
community access to best practices. Online Learning has created several effective approaches that
highlight quality courses and outstanding teaching examples.
Heavy Hitters
For almost five years, Online Learning has generated detailed reports to help identify factors that might
be associated with effective teaching. At the heart of this reporting is a record for each class of the
number of messages posted by the instructor and posted by students. The key metric used in the most
influential reporting of this data is course “interaction.” A total of all the online discussion postings,
course news announcements, and notes left by the instructor in the grade book and dropbox is compiled
and then divided by the number of students, plus one for the instructor. A research project we started last
year confirms our notion that this interaction metric is a good indicator of effective instruction in our fully
online courses. This metric is used to rank the courses, and the Top 50 courses each quarter are
recognized as “Heavy Hitters.”
Copyright 2008 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
Duplication or redistribution prohibited without written permission of the
author(s) and the Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning
3
24th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning
For more resources: http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference
OL Awards
Each year, Online Learning recognizes exemplary faculty, students, and courses by hosting the OL
Awards. A committee that includes faculty award winners from previous years, a dean, the Assistant
Provost for Teaching and Learning, the Director of Online Learning, and several instructional designers,
chooses exemplary courses and faculty. This process was so successful in helping the committee further
clarify quality measures in online courses that the strategy is now used by the Online Learning
instructional design team to review online courses. The critiques emphasize the presence of interaction in
the courses, and measures it using data from RIT’s course management system, among other sources. The
design staff also meets weekly to discuss course development issues, and these meetings are another
important place where a group consensus about quality is formed.
Conclusion
In his research with teams in the work place, Engeström observes that innovation is closely tied to
collaboration by team members, and that can lead to transformations in the organization’s work practices
(Engeström, 1999). This paper makes the claim that quality in distance education is a concept that is
socially constructed by both institutions and by the faculty and teams that work for them. These local
definitions, which teams arrive at in a variety of contexts, go on to interact with extrinsic definitions and
standards to shape the quality of distance education practices within society.
In the conversation we have about quality and its measures, intrinsic and extrinsic, we suggest that it is
important to always pay attention to what happens within the course design team itself. By understanding
how design teams and faculty negotiate the meaning of quality, distance learning administrators will be
able to ground themselves in sound design practice and avoid slipping into a “culture of compliance”
mentality regarding standards and measures of quality.
References
Allen, E., & Seaman, J. (2007). Online Nation: Five years of growth in online learning .Needham, MA:
The Sloan Consortium. Retrieved January 28, 2008, from http://www.sloanc.org/publications/survey/index.asp.
Chickering, A. (1991). Applying the seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Christie, M., & Stehlik, T. (2007). Centre for Competence and Knowledge Building in Higher Education.
Involving teachers and learners in quality assurance in higher education. Retrieved December
18, 2007, from http://www.ituniv.se/program/ckk/.
Engeström, Y., & Middleton, D. (1996). Cognition and communication at work, 346. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Engeström, Y. (2008). From teams to knots: Studies of collaboration and learning at work, 1, 280.
Cambridge University Press.
Garrison, R., & Archer, W. (2007). A theory of community of inquiry. In handbook of distance education
(2nd ed.), (2) (pp. 77-88). Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.
MarylandOnline. (2006). Quality matters. . Retrieved March 20, 2008, from
http://www.qualitymatters.org/.
Sherry, A. (2003). Quality and its measurement in distance education. In handbook of distance education
(pp. 435-458). Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Copyright 2008 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
Duplication or redistribution prohibited without written permission of the
author(s) and the Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning
4