Quality Matters at IU Southeast
Why Quality Matters?
Quality Matters provides professional development, a set of rubrics, and a course peer review process that work together to support faculty in improving the quality of online and blended courses. QM has received national recognition for its faculty-centered approach to continuous improvement in online education and student learning. QM has review processes for both online and blended courses, and online programs.
QM Rubrics and Standards were created to help course developers, teachers, faculty, entire organizations, and — most importantly — students. The General Standards and Specific Review Standards in each Rubric are intended to guide you through the development, evaluation, and improvement of your online and blended courses. The Rubric and associated annotations are based on best practices that promote student learning and instructional design principles for quality course design. The Rubric is supported by a thorough review of the research literature and is updated periodically to reflect new techniques and technologies that have become available.
The course review process involves a review of a course by a team of trained, certified peer reviewers who are all experienced online faculty. This faculty-driven process is intended to be diagnostic with the overall goal of course improvement. It does not involve pass/fail judgments but instead relies on the team members providing specific guidance for the course developer on what might be done to modify the course in order for it to meet QM Standards. There is clear recognition throughout the process that there are many ways to meet each Standard and that no course is perfect. To receive QM Certification as a quality course, a course must meet Rubric Standards at 85% or higher in the overall scoring by the review team.
The Quality Matters process is designed to ensure that courses undergoing review will eventually meet Standards and receive QM Certification.
View the Quality Matters Certified Courses at IU Southeast »
QM Internal Reviews: Preparing for an Official QM Review
In order to prepare a course for an official QM course review, seeking QM certification, it is required for the course to go through a QM internal review. This review is conducted by two faculty peers who teach online and successfully completed the QM Peer Reviewer Course. The Office of Online Education provides a stipend of $200 per internal review completed to each peer reviewer. The QM internal review process at Indiana University uses a modified form of the QM Higher Education Rubric, 6th Ed. that includes the following:
- Two QM Peer Reviewers
- All QM Standards
- Specific Review Standard 8.4 (accessibility of multimedia information in the course) as a 3-point, required standard
- IU Interaction Standard (assesses faculty-to-student interaction requirements) as a 3-point, required standard
Want to submit your online or hybrid course for a QM internal review? Please fill out this form.
Want to become a QM Peer Reviewer or learn more about Quality Matters? Contact the ILTE to find out more!
QM Membership
IU Southeast is part of the larger Indiana University system subscription to Quality Matters, paid for by the Office of Online Education. This membership provides faculty members and staff on this campus access to the fully annotated QM Rubric and the QM Course Review Management System, along with many other great tools and professional development opportunities.