More on the QM Rubric and Who Ows It

Since I am not such a big fan of the QM Rubric process, I was wondering who developed the creature? The Quality Matters Program (QM) is an international organization representing broad inter-institutional collaboration and a shared understanding of online course quality. QM's quality assurance processes have been developed to improve and certify the design of online and blended courses.

There is an an advisory council of 15 (only two of which are actually instructors), and none of the board of directors are instructors. Just what I suspected; that this is not a faculty-driven set of standards, and it sure looks like this idea of online instruction standards has been both institutionalized and corporatized.

Continued Growth in Community College Liberal Arts

Despite all the hand-wringing excessive emphasis on STEM courses, degrees and training, it looks like humanities (probably the social sciences too) courses and degrees continue to hold up well enrollment-wise. See Scott Jaschik, Community College Liberal Arts (20 January 2015).

Digital Assignments: Using Web-Based Tools to Go Beyond Just Writing Papers

My latest presentation was Digital Assignments: Using Web-Based Tools to Go Beyond Just Writing Papers. What I am hoping to do is get more instructors to consider using alternate assignments instead of the tradition read this and write that.