Quality assurance designing quality online course planning

Phase One: Planning (click to expand)

This phase starts once the project is approved/budgeted. This phase is very important (perhaps the most important phase) in the whole course development process. It calls for conducting a needs analysis, which covers analysis of learners’ characteristics, context, as well as instructional problems and instructional goals. During this phase, the course author/instructor will work very closely with the instructional designer to outline key objectives, teaching methodologies, schedules and goals, and assessment strategies much of which will be collected via a course design planning document. This phase will also allow the instructional designer/project manager to evaluate the needs in terms of technology, and make suggestions based on the strengths and limitations of some of the learning tools supported by the institution.

1. PLANNING

• • Discuss and confirm roles, responsibilities, budget, scope and time
• • Assign and contact an academic or peer reviewer
• • Discuss and develop a project schedule / agreement
• • Involve students

Note:

If you don't have an instructional designer to work with; filling out the course planning document would help you to map your course content and structure and make your development process much smoother and faster. It is important to monitor the project triangle (budget, time, and scope) all the time. If you do not have an academic reviewer assigned to your course, ask one of your colleagues in the department to go over your course content to ensure alignment with other courses and the program in your department. Make sure to involve students from planning into your course development, either through focus groups of new students or volunteers from those who have already completed the course. To move your project ahead, in the first two meetings, roles and responsibilities should be identified and confirmed, deadlines for each phase should be discussed and agreed on, the project manager should be identified and the project scope/development should be discussed and confirmed.

Tasks to be completed by the project manager/instructional designer (click to expand)

1. Organize a meeting with the course author (a faculty member or a subject matter expert) to establish a pedagogical approach, a rough schedule and learning outcomes, further analyze multimedia requirements, identify and develop a strategy for copyrighted materials. If you are working with different team members from different units, invite them all to the meeting to discuss individual's roles and responsibilities.

2. Prepare a project schedule prior to the meeting (if possible, send them to the course author to review prior to the meeting). Go through the project schedule with the course author during the meeting and try to develop an agreement around roles, responsibilities and timelines on the first few meetings.

3. Try to complete the following tasks in the meeting:

• Introduce the course author to the planning phase and the tasks involved.
• Finalize and sign the project schedule.
• Go over the course planning document with the course author.
• Show an online course which might have the same course structure/purpose or it is in the same department/faculty.
• Discuss about the delivery platform and the existing supported tools and technologies.
• Discuss and arrange the course author/instructor’s orientation and training of the delivery platform and other technologies.
• Go over the importance of Accessibility in the development of the course and discuss the basic requirements (i.e. Alternative texts, ALTs, for images and transcripts/captions for videos).
• Discuss the quality assurance and go over your Quality Assurance/check rubric as a guideline (Different quality guidelines are listed at this delicious account http://delicious.com/afsanehsh).

4. Send the course planning document along with the meeting notes and samples to the course author.

5. Contact the department head for an academic reviewer¹ (if possible). If you don't have an academic reviewer assigned to your course, ask one of your colleagues in the same field and department to review your course and to ensure your course is aligned with the program's/department's goal.

6. Contact the academic reviewer and discuss the project timelines and requirements for the review. Discuss and finalize the payment process (it is recommended to have the payment in two steps; one after the review of the course planning document and the second one after the review of the all the course content).

7. Review, provide feedback and finalize the course planning document with the course author within the timeline set on the project schedule.

8. Send the course planning document including the sample unit to the academic reviewer.

9. Share the academic reviewer’s feedback with the instructor and incorporate necessary changes.

1. Academic Reviewer: A person assigned by the department or main key holders to review the content of the course once written to confirm its curriculum alignment with other courses in a faculty/program as well as to avoid redundancy of content within the program.

Supporting Quality Assurance Documentation (click to expand)

1. Course Design Planning Document

2. Project/Course Schedule

3. How to Write Measurable Learning Outcomes

4. A list of guidelines for quality in online learning

5. A Sample of Course Syllabus