TCC Post 1: It's all about the teaching .......

From the WCET's "Best Practices for Electronically Offered Degree and Certificate programs", value #1:

Education is best experienced within a community of learning where competent professionals are actively and cooperatively involved with creating, providing, and improving the instructional program.

Students have two distinct forms of interaction with faculty when participating in an online class. First, they meet the faculty through the content the faculty has provided. Second, they interact with the faculty where the faculty comes online (into the classroom space) to facilitate the course. Good practice then suggests that well-designed quality guidelines would address both these areas of contact - the online materials and the "classroom" interaction - and that those guidelines would also emphasize the professional development of faculty.

Additional comments in the audio post:

TCC Post 2: Evaluating quality

How do quality guidelines support and improve course facilitation? CCCOnline’s guidelines around facilitation are available in our Faculty Gold document, found at http://www.ccconline.org/faculty/faculty_goldstar.htm. In fact, the majority of the overall course quality indicators we currently use are around course facilitation. Currently we look at:

• syllabus
• schedule
• announcements
• threaded discussions
• gradebook

TCC Post 3: Faculty support, rewards, and development

As an aid to increasing the general level of faculty support and also as a much needed reward to exemplary faculty, we have tried to build a reward system into the quality guidelines. Each year we offer a one day faculty conference with a lunch time awards ceremony. At the ceremony we recognize our exemplary faculty in front of their peers and attempt the thank them for all of the wonderful work they do all year. This is especially meaningful for our faculty as most of them are distant, so this is the one time of year they visit in person with their peers.

On a more day-to-day basis, we also pay a slightly higher stipend to faculty who met the requirements of the quality guidelines the previous term.

To support this activity faculty and staff have designed and offer a set of professional development workshops to assist faculty in meeting quality guidelines. These workshops are listed on our website at
http://www.ccconline.org/faculty/training_announce.htm.

Coaching by program chairs and faculty mentors has also become an integral part of communication plan.

TCC Post 4: Course design

The second area for quality guidelines is course design. To date CCCOnline has not incorporated many course design issues into our quality process. We now include only two limited recommendations, both of which are in direct response to student input. The first of these is a schedule page which lists all gradable items and their due dates. The second is a standardized syllabus format. Beyond those sorts of somewhat technical issues we require that all courses meet the learning outcomes agreed upon by each discipline team.

There are numerous rubrics available for course evaluation. We’ve looked at the rubrics used by WebCT for their Exemplary Course Project, the Online Course Evaluation Project (funded by the Hewlett Foundation), eCollege, and Chico State. All of these have made positive impacts on our course design. We have yet to distill them into a rubric that exactly meets our requirements however.

TCC Post 5: Faculty development with instruction in mind

Professional development for faculty has also been divided into two paths. The first workshop series is based on technical requirements of the course management system. The second is around designing and teaching online. That workshop series consists of Managing Discussions (also offered in conjunction with WebCT), Understanding Your Online Classroom, Measuring What Matters Online (an assessment workshop also offered in conjunction with WebCT), and Building Community, and Higher Ground, a workshop which addresses writing and documentation.

Full descriptions are available online at http://www.ccconline.org/faculty/training_CourseDescriptions.htm.

TCC Post 6: What we've learned about quality guidelines

Our experience has been that the development of quality guidelines both for course design and for course facilitation is a critical step for program success. The development of a set of written quality descriptors that most faculty, students, and administrators can agree upon is a challenging process, made more difficult by any expectations around evaluations and reward. However, that same process generates huge amounts of excitement around the courses and learning processes. Our courses are significantly better for having lived through the process once.

CCCOnline Quality Manual + Best Practices

Mapping CCCOnline Current Quality Assurance Practices to WICHE/WCET

Colorado Community Colleges Online has continued to develop its quality assurance program since 2001. In 2004, Colorado Community Colleges Online assembled those practices into a manual. The practices do support the WICHE/WCET best practices and havebeen adopted by all higher accrediting regions in the US, including North Central, CCCOnline's accrediting region

Colorado Community Colleges Online was one of four WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) awardees for this manual(WICHE/WCET, 2004). It is both available for sale to other institutions and ready for the next revision. The most current discussion is about the standards for faculty instructional practices in CCCOnline courses. The purpose of that discussion is to better describe the rationale and practice to also serve as a coaching piece for faculty development.

A map of the quality manual chapters to the best practices can be viewed at this link:

http://www.ccconline.org/misc/CCCO_QAtoWICHE.htm

Threaded Discussion Rubric

CCCOnline is in the midst of re-evaluating the rubric we use to evaluate the threaded discussions faculty and students create each semester. pasted in below in our current draft:

Threaded Discussion Quality Assurance Rubric for Instructor Led Discussions

Criteria	Best	Good	Needs Improvement	Why	Coaching
Set-up	Instructor led discussions included in more than 75% of units	Instructor led discussions included in 50% to 75% of units	Instructor led discussions in fewer than 50% of units	Human interaction as a community is important for learner retention. The instructor's interaction matters.	Discussions in the online classroom IS the classroom, the place where students interact with each other and with the instructor.
	1-2 instructor led discussion topics open at the same time.	3-4 instructor led discussion topics open at the same time	More than 4 topics requiring learner response open at same time	Too many options scatter the learner's attention and weaken the potential for community construction of knowledge.	There can be different types of discussions open at one time. Ex: 1 Instructor-led, 1 Question-Answer, 1 Private Journal or 1 Small Group Discussion. All these types of discussions serve different purposes.
	Discussion topics open for scheduled times.	Discussion topics open for scheduled times	Missed dates and times	Our courses are on semester timeline and we want to keep the class moving ahead.	Use the “Locked” feature of Discussions to open/close discussions at particular dates.
	Instructor provides initial post for each topic before the opening date of the topic.	Instructor provides initial post for each topic before the opening date of the topic.	No initial post	The initial post welcomes and directs the learners to the given topic.	Set up the Discussion board topics before class starts. Enter initial posts for each topic before the opening date of each topic. In an open topic, use the drop down list on the right side of the screen to “Select a Topic”. Choose “All” and then use the Compile command at the bottom of the screen. Save this file and make notes for future classes about the success of each discussion.
Timeliness	Instructor posts 4-5 days each week; all learner posts are responded to within 48 hours.	Instructor posts 3 days each week; the majority of learner posts are responded to within 48 hours.	Instructor input all on the same day or only a few responses.	Response to a learner's question or remark near the time it is posted is important to the teachable moment.	Drop into the course every day during the week (or even more than once a day) to respond to discussion posts, student mail, assignments etc. That way there won't be such a large amount of discussion postings to read at one time. Use a staggered schedule for discussion due dates. Perhaps the initial student comment would be due on Wednesday and remaining student comments would be due by Friday. That way students would not enter their postings all on one day.
Response Rate – Introductary and Welcome thread	Instructor responds to 100% of initial learner posts in the Introduction/ welcome thread	Instructor responds to more than 90% of initial learner posts in the introduction/ welcome thread	Instructor responds to fewer than 90% of initial learner posts in the introduction/ welcome thread	Welcoming all learners makes all the difference as the learner enters the experience. You are communicating that the presence of each member of this class matters.	Respond to each student in the Introduction topic area with a personalized response. Use information from the student introduction and connect it to your experience. Example: A student comments that she lives in Charleston , SC. Instructor might respond that she has visited SC and loved old town Charleston .
Quality of Interaction	Instructor regularly interacts with all learners in a class, both on as individual and group basis.	Instructor interaction does not consistently include all class participants and their concerns.	Instructor responds to only a select few individuals; may not answer all learner questions.	The contributions of all learners matter in the class. The instructor's address of individuals and the class helps learners benefit and build on the contributions of others.	Use the “group” posting to respond to several students with one post. For example, if three students commented about a topic, address one post to all three students. Use their name in the Subject line to capture attention. Add a redirecting or clarifying question to keep the discussion moving.
	Instructor posts acknowledges the learner's content	Instructor posts acknowledges the learner's content	No acknowledge- ment of learner understanding of content	The instructor's role is to motivate, encourage, guide, and challenge the learners to higher thinking /learning.	Restate the student's comments in another way acknowledging that they understood the concept/content.
	Instructor's posts re-engage the learner through additional questions at the same or higher level plus pulls the rest of the class into the discussion.	Instructor's posts re-engage the learner through additional questions at the same or higher level	No or limited re-engagement of learners	The course room provides the opportunity for group construction of knowledge. One to one address only, doesn't.	Try a “scaffolding” technique. Start the discussion with a “lower level” type question to begin to build the concept and encourage students to construct a base for their knowledge structure. Begin by asking knowledge based questions like, “what did the book have to say about X”, or “How would you define this term?” Perhaps provide a definition or two to get the class discussion going. Then move to “higher level” questioning using application, analysis, evaluation or synthesis type questions.
	Instructor posts add clarifying or additional information, directing or re-directing the discussion	Instructor posts add clarifying or additional information, directing or re-directing the discussion	Instructor post does not either further the discussion or appropriately close it	The “guide on the side” adds expertise, corrects misconceptions in a timely fashion.	Monitor the discussion for misinformation and direct the students to web references or text references for correct information. Bring in “guest discussants” to provide content expertise.
	Instructor posts help learners apply the content to their own lives.	Instructor sometimes helps the learners apply the content to their own lives.	No attempt	Applying knowledge to life contexts is appealing to adults. It also “cements” the learning to a larger context.	Offer website references or other resources to expand on the topic and connect it to the students' personal experiences and instructor's experiences.
	Instructor or assigned learner posts the discussion summary.	Instructor announces the closure of the discussion.	No closing remarks or summary	Providing synthesis or additional resources is valuable to the course experience, and summary skills are valuable in many contexts. Having learner s summarize provides them practice with this skill also.	Add a closing post which summarizes the important points from the discussion.

Discussion types other than Instructor led:

CCCOnline does not currently require the use of discussion types other than instructor led. However, their use is encouraged if appropriate for your subject matter.

The following guidelines apply if you choose to use Small Group Discussions or Peer-to-Peer Discussions

Criteria	Best	Good	Needs Improvement	Why	Coaching
Set-up	Opening statement from faculty sets expectations for both learners and faculty	Opening statement from faculty sets expectations for both learners and faculty	No opening remarks or attempt to set expectations	Providing learners with opening directions moves them to the task at hand more quickly. Instructions also provide the big picture for the process which learners are about to enter.	Prepare students for the small group by providing explicit instructions and expectations. Set the goal for the small group experience. Provide ample time to accomplish that goal. Identify the grading rubric for the small group project. Provide time for the students to debrief their experience. Participate in the Building Community Workshop for more information on small groups.
	Faculty periodically enters discussion to confirm or re-direct the group process	Faculty periodically enters discussion to confirm or re-direct the group process	No evidence faculty is present in the discussion	If participants are off course, re-direction does matter.	Instructor does not need to dominate these types of discussions. Enter a comment or two to show presence and redirect or encourage students as necessary.
	Faculty provides summary or closing remarks	Faculty announces the closure of the discussion	No closing remarks or summary	This is another teachable moment, especially if common errors are surfacing, ones which could be corrected before a final project is turned in, for example.	Post a summary of main points and redirect to further activity. i.e. note common strengths or errors, resources.

The following guidelines apply to Question and Answer discussions:

Criteria	Best	Good	Needs Improvement	Why	Coaching
Set-up	Opening statement from faculty sets expectations for both learners and faculty	Opening statement from faculty sets expectations for both learners and faculty	No opening remarks or attempt to set expectations	Providing learners with opening directions moves them to the task at hand more quickly. Instructions also provide the big picture for the process which learners are about to enter.	Post initial question or direction so that students understand the purpose of this discussion and how to enter their questions. Encourage students to respond to classmates' questions.
	Instructor acknowledges every learner post and provides additional resources in their own response	Instructor acknowledges every learner post	Instructor responds to less than 100% of questions	To invite questions only to ignore them is frustrating for learners.	Answer every question or acknowledge the correct answer if already posted by another student.