The Quality Matters Impact program formally recognizes courses that meet Quality Matters (QM) standards and demonstrate exemplary online/hybrid course design. An extension of the award-winning PIVOT program, the call for participation in the Quality Matters Impact program is open now for the 2023-24 academic year with reviews scheduled in fall, spring, or summer. 

Using the 6th edition of the QM Higher Education Rubric, a formal QM course review is a collegial process to provide helpful recommendations for continuous improvement and reinforce effective, research-based practices for online and hybrid course design. The 7th edition of the QM rubric is slated for release in July 2023. 

A QM course review provides independent validation of quality, learner-focused course design. As of December 2022, 70% of the QM-certified courses in the University System of Maryland are taught by UMBC faculty. A course achieves QM Certification when it meets QM Rubric Standards at the 85% threshold or better and meets all Essential Standards. QM certification is valid for five years.

DoIT's Instructional Technology team manages the QM review process and facilitates the fully online, asynchronous Applying the Quality Matters Rubric workshop designed to help instructors prepare for a QM course review.

When a course is deemed having met QM standards, the instructor is eligible to display the QM Certification Mark on the syllabus or within the course itself. To maintain QM certification, and be listed onQM's website, courses may be re-certified for an additional three years or officially reviewed again.

Selection Criteria: 

Participants selected for the Quality Matters Impact program agree to submit a hybrid or online course for a Quality Matters course review.

Full or part-time faculty who meet the criteria and have not previously received funding through the Quality Matters Impact program are encouraged to apply by March 30, 2023. 

Recognizing that the QM Impact program does require an investment of time to participate, a $1000 professional development award will be provided to faculty by the Provost's office once a course meets QM standards and all participation requirements are met.

Eligibility for full and part-time faculty

1. You have taught your course as online or hybrid for at least two semesters at UMBC.
2. You have proficiency with Blackboard by your ability to demonstrate the skills in at least six of the eight Skill Builder themes for Blackboard in a current or prior online or hybrid course.

Faculty who meet the eligibility criteria are encouraged to apply by March 30, 2023 for early consideration and feedback. All QMI applications are due no later than June 1.

Applicants may choose one of two review types:

1. QM Review: Official course review with external reviewers. Courses that successfully met QM Standards for course design are eligible to display the QM Course Certification Mark. 
2. QM Essentials: Unofficial review of a course in its entirety that is completed internally against QM's 23 Essential Standards. This type of review is not eligible for QM Certification. 

Inclusion Criteria

Faculty accepted into the QMI cohort agree to participate in the following activities:

• Attend a 45-minute QMI orientation session (virtually, choose January 20 or March 10 at 12 noon)
• Complete the fully online (asynchronous) Applying the Quality Matters Rubric (APPQMR) 2-week workshop offered January 10-24, 2023, facilitated by UMBC.
• You may also choose to complete the online APPQMR workshop facilitated by Salisbury (with UMBC support) on one of these additional dates: February 14-28, April 11-25, or July 11-25
• However, if you have successfully completed APPQMR, you will complete a QM Self-Review of the course you will take through the review process
• Complete a QM self-review of your course (recommended)
• Attend a pre-review conference call with your assigned review team as QM course review windows are fixed: Once assigned, there are limited opportunities to reschedule.
• Implement recommendations to meet QM standards based on helpful suggestions from your assigned review team
• Respond to both a QM survey and a QMI post-program survey after the course review has concluded  
• Participate on a future panel or record a testimonial about your experience

Each accepted QMI applicant will be assigned a specialist to answer Quality Matters questions and support your course prep for the course review.

Application Requirements 

An application to participate in the Quality Matters Impact program must include both course-level objectives and unit-level objectives.

Ready to submit? Please complete the QMI application.

Questions? Please reach out to one of the QM coordinators for UMBC:

Dr. Mariann Hawken, Director, Instructional Technology, mariannhawken@umbc.edu

Dr. Susan Biro, Manager, Online Learning, sbiro@umbc.edu

After participating in rigorous peer reviews of their online and hybrid courses, four additional UMBC faculty have earned Quality Matters certification as part of the campus’ Quality Matters Impact (QMI) pilot.

Faculty participants received feedback from certified Quality Matters peer reviewers at UMBC and other online learning experts in the QM community. 

The four courses are:

EHS 115 - Medical Terminology  Gary Williams Date certified: 06.01.2022
GWST 210 - Introduction to Critical Sexuality Studies Kate Drabinski Date certified: 05.23.2022
SOCY 351 - Health, Illness, and Medicine John Schumacher Date certified: 05.27.2022
CMSC 104 - Problem Solving and Computer Programming  Chris Marron Date certified: 07.26.2022

These four faculty join those who earned QM Certification earlier this year: 

• AGNG 355 - The Experience of Dementia (Louise Murray)
• CHEM 101 - Principles of Chemistry 1 (Sarah Bass)
• EDUC 667 - Structure of English for TESOL (Mary Tabaa)
• ENCH 300 - Chemical Process Thermodynamics (Mariajose Castellanos)
• PBHL 100 - Survey of the US Healthcare System (Katie Birger)

After participating in rigorous peer reviews of their online and hybrid courses, five UMBC faculty have earned Quality Matters certification as part of the campus’ Quality Matters Impact (QMI) pilot. In partnership with the Provost’s Office, the QMI pilot launched in FA2021 as an extension of the award-winningPIVOT program to recognize exemplary course design. 

Faculty participants received feedback from certified Quality Matters peer reviewers at UMBC and other online learning experts in the QM community. The five courses include:

These courses are eligible to display the QM Certification Mark, an internationally recognized symbol of online and blended course design quality. The QM Certification Mark represents these instructors’ ongoing commitment to creating learning environments that provide students with a clear pathway to success. QM Certification is the result of the faculty’s dedication to continuous improvement. 

Promoting quality and lessons learned 

In the first GO Chat of 2022, scheduled for February 25 at 1 PM, Louise Murray and Mary Tabaa will share their experiences with the formal review process and showcase their QM-certified courses. 

The call for participation in the Quality Matters Impact program is open twice a year with reviews scheduled in fall/winter and spring/summer. Using the 6th edition of the QM Higher Education Rubric, a formal QM course review is designed to be a collegial process to provide helpful recommendations for continuous improvement and reinforce effective, research-based practices for online and hybrid course design. 

A QM Official review provides independent validation of quality, learner-focused course design. As of February 2022, only nine courses in the University System of Maryland are formally certified by Quality Matters, which is valid for five years. To maintain QM certification, and be listed on QM’s website, courses may be recertified for an additional three years or officially reviewed again. A course achieves QM Certification when it meets QM Rubric Standards at the 85% threshold or better and meets all Essential Standards.

DoIT’s Instructional Technology team manages the formal review process and facilitates the fully online, asynchronous Applying the Quality Matters Rubric workshop designed to help instructors prepare for a formal course review. When a course is deemed having met QM standards, the instructor is eligible to display the QM Certification Mark on the syllabus or within the course itself. QMI program participants receive a $1,000 professional development award for completing required activities and their course meeting QM standards.  

For more information about the Quality Matters Impact program, please contact the QM coordinators for UMBC:

Dr. Mariann Hawken

Director, Instructional Technology

mariannhawken@umbc.edu

Dr. Susan Biro

Manager, Online Learning

sbiro@umbc.edu

The Online Learning Consortium announced that UMBC's Instructional Technology team has earned an Effective Practice Award for its Planning Instructional Variety for Online Teaching (PIVOT) program. Led by Dr. Mariann Hawken, representatives from the Instructional Technology team will receive the award at the OLC Accelerate conference in Washington, D.C. 

“As we return to campus life, it is undeniable that the pandemic shift to online learning and PIVOT’s support has made an impact on our faculty and students,” said Jack Suess, Vice President of IT and CIO.

The Effective Practice Awards are peer-reviewed and evaluated against OLC’s five pillars of quality in digital education:

• Learning Effectiveness: The practice demonstrates effectiveness in producing learning outcomes, which are consistent with learner needs and representative of the distinctive quality of the institution.

• Scale: The practice offers the best possible educational value to learners and supports achieving capacity enrollment. 

• Access: The practice has improved access to education by expanding opportunities and/or reducing barriers.

• Faculty Satisfaction: The practice has maintained a high level of faculty satisfaction.

• Student Satisfaction: Learners who are impacted by the practice express satisfaction with their learning experience.

“The OLC Awards program is an opportunity to showcase leadership and innovation in the field of online, blended, and digital learning,” said Dr. Jennifer Mathes, Chief Executive Officer of the Online Learning Consortium. “The awards program allows us not only to celebrate the incredible work that has been done by our community in the past year, but to look forward to what is possible in the year to come.”

Given the rapid shift to online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the Instructional Technology team created the PIVOT program to help faculty better prepare for a long-term commitment to virtual instruction. Leveraging an approach that targeted an individual instructor’s reflection on technology use, online pedagogies, and course content, PIVOT took faculty through a course design and online teaching journey. Since faculty engagement in planning and delivering this important training is critical to establishing peer relationships, the program included peer mentors for pedagogical and technical facilitation. “For many of our faculty members,” said Dr. John Stolle-McAllister, Associate Dean, College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, “this collaboration was a highlight of the program because they learned from each other and engaged with instructors from their own and other departments, sharing ideas and exploring tasks and projects that they would not have otherwise considered.”

PIVOT reached about 70% of UMBC’s faculty, and the majority of participants said the program was helpful for their pedagogical shift to online teaching. Faculty found their role as students in the training course and access to peer mentors to be among the most valuable aspects of the program. Students reported PIVOT-designed courses were well organized and planned. Moreover, there is a statistically significant, positive relationship between instructors completing PIVOT training and elevated course-level average values on end of semester evaluations (p<.001). Courses taught by PIVOT-trained instructors also have increased LMS interactions, which indicate improved learner engagement. “While the pandemic has been a huge challenge,” said Dr. Sarah Shinn, Associate Provost, “our PIVOT program has played a critical role in helping our faculty and students be successful.” Earlier this year, PIVOT also received the 2021 "Job Well Done" award from UMBC's Human Resources department.

Through the OLC Effective Practices program, the OLC community shares techniques, strategies and practices that have worked effectively in their institution or program. Two rounds of Effective Practices Awards are awarded annually.

A free panel discussion and celebration is scheduled for the OLC Accelerate Virtual Awards Gala on Monday September 20, 2021 at 7:45 PM as a part of the OLC Accelerate virtual program. Further opportunities to engage directly with these winners are currently being scheduled for after the conclusion of the OLC Accelerate conference when a selection of these award-winning individuals will be hosting free public webinars for the OLC community. The final schedule for these webinars will be announced in a future release.

More information about the OLC Effective Practice Awards can be found online at https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/about/olc-awards/effective-practices/

In a survey of more than 900 students from fall 2020 who completed courses that utilized no-cost or low-cost Open Educational Resources (OER), UMBC students said they appreciated saving money on instructional materials and would recommend an OER course to others.

Nearly 90% of students said the quality of the OER course materials was of similar or higher quality than non-OER course materials. In the surveyed courses, faculty replaced traditional print textbooks with OERs and provided supplemental digital homework tools. Forty-five percent of students who completed the survey said they would be fairly likely or very likely to enroll in an OER course again, while 53% said they would recommend an OER course to others.

Instructors Sarah Bass (CHEM 101), Tara Carpenter (CHEM 102), and Maria Manni (SPAN 101/103) replaced traditional print textbooks with OERs and provided supplemental digital homework tools. 

Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium (digital or otherwise) that are released under an open license that permits no-cost or low-cost access, use, adaptation, or redistribution (UNESCO, 2002). OER can include textbooks, syllabi, supplementary materials, quizzes, assessment rubrics, homework, or labs.

About 60 comments were provided about students’ experience with OERs. The majority of written feedback focused on positive engagement with the digital resources and homework tools that supported students’ ability to practice problems or equations and learn vocabulary. 

Students offered additional comments about how they would use money saved from OER toward paying tuition or other fees (64%), covering personal expenses (55%), buying textbooks or materials for other classes (46%), or taking an additional course (19%). Some expressed challenges with the materials themselves, such as relevance to course content, impact on learning style, or ability to annotate online content vs. printed material. 

Additional observations: 

• 61% of students reported spending between $51 - $150 on textbooks or other course materials in a typical semester. 
• 55% of students said they usually purchase online or digital textbooks. 
• 80% of students reported having fairly reliable or extremely reliable internet access, with 19% reporting neutral or somewhat reliable access. 

A total of 551 students completed the survey from the 917 invited to participate. The survey was distributed to students using Blackboard’s native Enterprise Survey tool. 

Explore how you can adopt OERs for your course:

• Follow the Open Educational Resources group on myUMBC 
• Check out the OER research guide

Attend upcoming virtual events:

• How to get started with Open Educational Resources - March 3, 12 noon - 1 p.m.
• M.O.S.T. State Summit, Using OER to Advance Equity and Inclusion - April 8-9

Contact OER co-chairs Erin Durham (edurham@umbc.edu) or Susan Biro (sbiro@umbc.edu) for more information on OER at UMBC.