Presenters: Sarah Barhhardt, Steve Kabrhel, and Dionne Thorne (The Community College of Baltimore County)
Staff and faculty from The Community College of Baltimore County shared how they are using Internal Reviews to cultivate a sustainable quality assurance program on a budget.
A key part to their development as a successful online institution was their introduction of online learning committees andinitiatives. They also wanted to address the gap in outcomes in online and blending learning classes that was presented in the Middles States Commission on Higher Education 2012 Report. Problems that they identified within their courses
included: lack of consistency, accreditation concerns, accountability, masters courses, training/faculty preparation,
student success, retention rates, quality assurance. The community college looked to Quality Matters as a resource to help solve some of these issues. They first discussed whether an internal or external review process would be more appropriate before
deciding on an internal review initiative that included recruiting faculty, faculty buy-in, self review, QM training, peer review teams, and a overall 3 year review plan. The CCBC Internal Review Initiative teams consisted of a subject matter expert, an instructional designer, and a peer reviewer, who all had to go through QM training.
Since 2013, the college have completed 32 EXTERNAL course reviews and over 12,000 students have been exposed to these courses. Since 2016, the college has completed 58 INTERNAL course reviews, with over 1183 students being exposed to their courses. These are individual faculty sections.
Other challenges that have been seen by the institution: faculty buy in, intellectual property rights, and academic freedom. CCBC tries to emphasize they are there to look at course structure, not content. Also, more of the reason to include subject matter experts in the groups. The college also includes this as a reason why many faculty members should go through the training themselves, so that they may review their own courses. The teams also needed to work to gain the support of people in supervisory roles. Finally, they have introduced a student assessment for feedback in the courses. There was an orientation video and module for the courses and evaluation tools so that students could provide this course feedback.
The story continues: The CCBS standards now include student online learning readiness orientation course and video, required teaching online course for faculty, and course development procedures put in place.
