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I chose this article as it relates well to the ch 5 discussion regarding quality in blended courses.

Beth - so interested to see that you chose this article!! I participated in this study as the Quality Matters trainer. So the two groups (short training, long training) worked with me to learn how to apply QM to improve their courses. We have been Quality Matters subscribers for 6 years and incorporate it into all the training and development of online courses.

This is an international consortium about quality blended learning.

We've been using Quality Matters for several years and although it might appear that the focus is "quality in online courses", the rubric and process works well for blended learning as well. https://www.qualitymatters.org/

This reading from Quality Matters was the prompt for me to searching for possibilities to learn more about online/blended learning. It is clear written and gives very practical informations.

Increasingly, faculty who teach an online course may not be the ones who actually designed the course. Thus, current measurements, especially those that focus on course design and innovation, are not appropriate tools for assessing these faculty members. Instead, the authors assert: "We must look at the actions performed by the instructors within the course." The objective of the authors' study was "to identify a set of criteria that would yield objective data easily examined by supervisors and peers during an online course observation and serve as a balance to the more subjective data gathered from student surveys." The authors identified six questions to be used as a starting point for evaluating online instructors. These questions are copied below verbatim: Has the instructor logged in at least an average of every other day? Has the instructor posted a biography of at least a paragraph, in addition to contact info? Has the instructor posted announcements at least weekly? Is there evidence that the instructor answers student inquiries in two days or less? Does the instructor participate in discussion forums where appropriate? Does the instructor provide feedback on assignments? This article is an excellent resource because it clearly delineates between design and instruction. It also provides the six very concrete questions to use when evaluating instructors.