Quality Matters
What is Quality Matters?
Quality Matters (QM) is a faculty-centered, peer review process that is designed to certify the quality of online and blended (hybrid) courses. QM is a leader in quality assurance for online education and has received national recognition for its peer-based approach and continuous improvement in online education and student learning. QM subscribers include community and technical colleges, colleges and universities, K-12 schools and systems, and other academic institutions.
There are three primary components in the Quality Matters Program: The QM Rubric, the Peer Review Process and QM Professional Development.
- The QM Rubric: Based on research-supported and published best practices, the QM Rubric is a set of standards by which to evaluate the design of online and blended (hybrid) courses. The rubric is complete with annotations that explain the application of the standards and the relationship between them. A scoring system and set of online tools facilitate the evaluation by a team of reviewers.
- The Peer Review Process: Quality Matters promotes a peer review process and provides a database of trained QM Peer Reviewers eligible for assignment to a peer review team. Any subscribing institution may conduct internal or informal reviews. Official course reviews may be conducted only by eligible subscribers, QM, or its designees.
- Professional Development: Quality Matters Professional Development supports the other QM program components and is an important part of a quality assurance effort. QM provides on-site, online and web-conference opportunities to a broad audience that includes, but is not limited to, instructional designers, faculty, instructors, teachers, and administrators.
Quality Matters @ BC3
BC3 has been a subscriber to the Quality Matters program since the summer of 2010. The Quality Matters course design rubric is frequently used as a guiding resource for BC3 faculty when designing and developing online and hybrid courses.
The ability to offer a variety of professional development opportunities to all College faculty and staff through the Quality Matters program supports the College's mission to provide quality education, training, and enrichment opportunities to the communities we serve, particularly in the distance education (online and hybrid) course delivery formats. Over the past several years, more than 120 BC3 faculty and staff have participated in one or more of the Quality Matters professional development workshops, including the Applying the QM Rubric flagship workshop.
BC3 has a number of faculty who hold the QM Peer Reviewer and Master Reviewer certifications. These individuals are dedicated to helping the College to achieve the mission of quality educational offerings by voluntarily participating in the institution's internal Peer Review Group, and serve periodically on QM Official Course Reviews for other institutions when requested through the Quality Matters program.
BC3 currently has 20 courses that are "QM-Approved" based on the Quality Matters Official Course Review process.