Making the Grade: Quality Assurance for eLearning Design at Penn State

Amy Garbrick, Penn State University

Already excited with this session because of the handouts provided: a course review worksheet, an inspector input worksheet and a whole thing on eLearning design standards. Hallelujah! Finally something I can use to make our courses better. I've been talking about trying to apply standards, but could never find standards to adhere to.

This session is all about how PSU developed quality standards, implemented them and the process of how they did it all.

The problem at PSU:

• course design & development varied among colleges, designers, ect. No one standard. Some developed by faculty, some by teams, some new, some old.
  
• Can PSU decide on design standards (visual).

PSU QA standards based on Quality Matters.

QA Standards are a set of 12 standards and determining what metrics will be measured to know if courses have met these standards, as well as developing best practices for course design. PSU went through a lengthy process to get the results they have today.

Quality Assurance documents at PSU:

• The Standards
• Instructor Input Form (for course review)
  completed by course faculty developer to provide additional information about the course
  
• Course Review Worksheet

They can be used for a new course, to review an existing course, to provide feedback to IDs.

While quality and consistence has benefits, there are some challenges are on flexibility, and internal 'political' hurdles.

Group Work to assess a PSU course based on one of the 12 standards. We're checking #9 Learning Activities and Assessment.

Biggest eyeopening moment: what corporate sees as interactive is very different than what higher education sees as interactive.

The group activity really didn't seem as effective as I expected. The focus of this was geared more towards higher education training and I'm on the corporate side. I think the best thing I got out of this session are the handouts. I would have been more excited if the session covered how PSU came up with the standards or presented a walk-through on how they applied the QA on a particular course.

I started to glaze over when the conversation turned to Moodle, Blackboard, type of course management systems. Again, not corporate based so less relevant to me.

Hopefully the next session is better for me.