DELTA Honored with 2024 Quality Matters “Making a Difference for Students” Award
The NC State DELTA Course Quality team works diligently to ensure that our online courses meet the high standards set by the nonprofit Quality Matters (QM) education organization. This year, they were recognized nationally for their outstanding service efforts on behalf of a higher education institution. The award recognizes outstanding efforts in service to quality assurance practices in online courses.
Led by Bethanne Winzeler, associate director of Course Quality, the team includes:
- Jill Anderson, lead instructional technologist
- Christine Cranford, instructional designer
- Arlene Mendoza-Moran, lead instructional technologist
- Alin Yalcinkaya, postdoctoral research scholar
- Rebecca Sanchez, senior instructional designer for DELTA at the time of the award (now director of NC State’s Quality Enhancement Plan).
“We applied for this award to share our journey in ensuring high course quality and our approach to improving learner outcomes in online education,” said Winzeler.
“Our hope is that this national recognition of our work at NC State will increase instructor participation in our Course Quality efforts, leading to even greater outcomes for our learners.”
The award will be presented at the QM Connect annual conference in Chicago in November, at which the programmatic theme is “Empowering Learners, Enabling Potential.” Winzeler, Anderson and Cranford will be presenting a session at the conference entitled “Bichronous Faculty Professional Development: Why it Works (and sometimes doesn’t).”
At the conference, DELTA staff participated in two poster sessions. The session “Student Voices: The Impact of Course Quality on Student Experience, Satisfaction, and Belongingness” was presented by Yalcinkaya, Sanchez and Winzeler, along with DELTA Research Scholar Dan Spencer.
The second poster, “Strategies for Bringing Awareness to QM and the QM Rubric: Lessons Learned and Next Steps,” was presented by Deidra Craig, Distance Education Coordinator for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Winzeler was previously honored with the QM “Making a Difference for Students” Outstanding Impact by an Individual award in 2020. Her dedication and significant contributions to DELTA’s CQ program play an integral role in fostering student success through exceptional instructional design and faculty development initiatives.
Course Quality Program Impact
Built on the foundations of the globally-recognized standards-based QM program, the CQ program prioritizes continuous improvement in digital teaching and learning environments through exceptional professional development and training opportunities.
The program was established in 2018 with an ambitious goal: to improve the quality of online education at a large public university through rigorous professional development opportunities.
“Before the initiative’s implementation, there was no institutional support to evaluate the quality of online and hybrid course design,” explained Winzeler. “Our goals for CQ were to establish a standard of quality and set of expectations in the design of online and blended courses, provide instructional design support and professional development opportunities for faculty and organize a process for formal and informal peer reviews of online and blended courses.”
Since then, dozens of instructors, hundreds of course instances, and tens of thousands of students have benefitted from the course design best practices outlined by Quality Matters. More than 200 NC State faculty and staff have completed the Applying the Quality Matters Rubric training, Quality Matters’s flagship workshop on the QM Higher Education Rubric and its use in reviewing the design of online and blended courses.
Before the Course Quality Program implementation, there was no institutional support to evaluate the quality of online and hybrid course design
“The effect of the CQ Program on my course design has had a strong positive impact on my students, who have commented directly to me and in course evaluations on the accessibility, clarity and impact of my courses,” said CQ Faculty Mentor Jessica Thomas, an associate professor of practice in the Poole College of Management.
Additionally, three templates developed by the CQ team have been made available to the entire university: the Quick Start Course Shell (Moodle LMS template), the syllabus template, and the student services block, all of which incorporate instructional design best practices from the QM rubric. The widespread use on campus of these templates has led to the infusion of quality in many courses spanning various modalities.
With more than 14,000 NC State students enrolled each year in a QM-certified course, the impact is clear: DELTA’s Course Quality program supports the success of thousands of online students with high-quality, innovative learning experiences.
Interested in partnering with DELTA’s Course Quality Program to improve your online courses and support better learning outcomes for your students?
- Learn more about CQ programming
- Explore DELTA Grants opportunities in course improvement
- Join the Course Quality at NC State group
- Reach out to the CQ team
