Open Education Practices and Quality Assurance (QA)
Institutional and faculty practices to assure the quality of online and hybrid instruction is of critical importance. Design and evaluation rubrics, professional development programs, examples of quality online course designs can all support faculty’s efforts to design and deliver quality online instruction.
Ensuring Quality Open and Online Learning (eQOOL)
SkillsCommons and MERLOT have developed and offer a free and open quality assurance program for online and hybrid instruction. eQOOL is a Creative Commons adaptation of the California State University, Quality Learning and Teaching evaluation instrument that was developed in 2011 (and updated in 2017). After reviewing related research and careful consideration of existing QA models, we are enhancing the eQOOL instrument and evaluation processes to include open education and affordability criteria and practices.
Openly sharing QA practices adopted by institutions (including program design, implementation, and assessments) can enable scaling exemplary practices within the faculty community and across campuses. Capturing these practices in open institutional ePortfolios can be an effective means for communicating and collaborating on adopting openly licensed QA evaluation instruments and processes which are included in this website. Explore about 20 open institutional ePortfolios about their QA strategies and the open eQOOL instruments, professional development resources, and examplars.
Quality Assurance Organizations
There are nationally recognized quality assurance organizations that you can join to support designing quality instruction into your programs. These organizations provide excellent professional development programs and well-researched and reliable rubrics for evaluating the quality of online and hybrid courses.
University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA) Hallmarks of Excellence In Online Leadership 