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What I Learned from QM

Last fall, I had the opportunity to submit a course for QM certification, and I learned that the course was approved for certification yesterday. Since our topic this week is evaluation, I thought I’d take a moment and reflect on my experience with the process.

Though we all have access to the QM standards, and we are supposed to be using those standards as guidelines for our courses, actually submitting a course is an intense process. It is not enough to know that assignments connect to course learning outcomes, for example, you have to be able to articulate how they connect to folks who may not even be familiar with your discipline.

At times, I found myself fighting the process. I mean, how many students actually care about which course outcome an assignment connects to? Ha! Even so, as I finished the process of my course review, I found that I had a new appreciation for this intense sort of evaluation.

Seeing my course through fresh eyes also gave me several ideas for making the course easier to navigate, more interesting visually (adding tabs and using Canva for fun module and weekly navigation links), and less cluttered. It also forced me to think through accessibility issues, like having alt tags and video transcripts.

Overall, the process was a great learning experience, and I’m looking forward to applying what I learned this go-round as I begin the process of certifying another of my online courses. 🙂

Karen