Category: Review Process

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Content Development Design Extension Food Systems i-Three Corps Review Process

i-Three Issue Corps – Design of Online Extension Courses Using the Quality Matters Rubric

stack of stonesOne of the tools I use when developing an online course is the Quality Matters (QM) rubric.  QM is a nationally recognized, faculty-centered, peer review process designed to certify the quality of online course design and online components.  A QM rubric can be used by an individual evaluating their own course, or can be used by an institution for an internal or external course review.  Four different QM rubrics are available: Higher Education, K-12 Education, Educational Publishing, and Continuing and Professional Education.  Courses offered through Extension are primarily Continuing and Professional Education; this rubric can be viewed and printed from http://www.elo.iastate.edu/files/2016/03/qm-rubric.pdf.

screenshot of QM continuing and professional education rubricThe Quality Matters Rubric consists of 43 standards assigned different point values depending on their relative importance.  Twenty-two of the standards are considered ESSENTIAL and given a point value of 3.  Each standard is evaluated and scored as MET and receives the points for that standard, or NOT MET and receives zero points for that standard.  To meet Quality Matters review expectations the course must meet all 3-point essential standards and earn an overall score of 85 out of 100.  QM peer reviewers give detailed feedback on each standard to help the instructor or facilitator improve the course.

Even if you never have an online course that goes through a formal Quality Matters review, this rubric is good to use as a checklist of best practices when designing an online course.  It can even help improve face-to-face teaching, for example in General Standard 2 you check to see that the course learning objectives are measurable, related to course activities, and suited to the purpose and level of the course – this is a good habit to get into for all of our teaching.  I don’t know about you, but I’m usually running in ten different directions, so if I don’t slow down and focus on this for each training opportunity I offer, I may look back at the end and see things that could have been better aligned.  It’s much better to design with these standards in mind.

I presented a webinar on this topic on June 10, 2016.  Check it out at https://nextgenerationextension.org/2016/05/13/best-practices-when-blazing-the-trail-for-online-learners/.  And feel free to email me at connie.fisk@unl.edu if you have any questions.

QM is one tool that I am using in the development my i-Three Issue Corps project, an online course in Urban Food Production for backyard and community gardeners in Eastern Nebraska.  The course will cover the basics of growing and raising food in an urban setting, including everything from site evaluation and considerations of zoning regulations to harvest and handling of fresh produce and will provide easy-to-understand, research-based recommendations tailored to Nebraska growing conditions through interactive lessons, short video demonstrations, and links to available web resources.  The course is expected to launch in the spring of 2017 at http://campus.extension.org/.

Stack of stones photo source: https://pixabay.com/en/feng-shui-stones-texture-material-1536892/

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Community Content Content Development Design Media Metrics Review Process Web

Image Audit Nears Completion

ImageAuditeXtension content includes more than 10,000 images. This summer we received inquiries concerning copyright documentation from individuals and stock photo companies regarding some of the legal aspects of our hosted images. Even though our content management system provides ability to document an image source, there were gaps in providing proper attribution. To reduce the legal risk caused by lack of validated information, eXtension launched a process to audit each of our media files and provide documentation where there was none. In addition, this process was used to “unpublish” low performing, unviewed material.

Beginning mid-August “stock” photographs were identified and documented. Images with insufficient proof of ownership were replaced. eXtension Staff worked with communities to accomplish this process which was completed on September 30, 2015. The next stage included an audit of original images and photographs, identifying the source, and attaching a Creative Commons license whenever possible. Thousands of images were checked. The process is still ongoing with a goal to complete all by December 31, 2015. At that time any images that do not have source information will be removed.

The following infographic illustrates the work that has been done thanks to the help of many individuals led by Anne Adrian.

eXtnsArticlesInfographic

If you believe that any image on the eXtension Foundation website should be removed, please notify eXtension Foundation’s Copyright Agent at copyright@eXtension.org or follow the notice and take down procedures outlined in our Terms of Use.

 

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Information Review Process

Public Ask an Expert Questions: Editing for SEO and Curation

Ask an Expert provides a direct one-to-one conversation between the question submitter and the responding expert. However, if the submitter chooses to make the question public by checking the “Share my question on Ask an Expert” box, it can suddenly end up in front of a much larger audience. To improve the quality and discoverability of these public questions, questions and responses can be edited by anyone with an eXtension account.

If a question is public, the goal is for it to rank well with Google and other search engines so the answer can be found by others and have a greater impact. To this end, we encourage experts to correct grammatical and spelling errors, convert bare URLs into descriptive links or even rewrite question titles to make them more descriptive, which will help the question rank higher in search results. This process is called search engine optimization (SEO).

In addition, questions may need to have personal information removed — sometimes submitters include phone numbers, email addresses or physical addresses as a part of the question. These details should not be shared publicly, and the expert has the choice of switching the question to private, or editing out the personal data.

Every part of a question is editable: the title, the question body and the expert response(s). When question body or title is edited, the last assigned expert is notified. If an expert response is edited, that expert is notified.

In addition to being viewable on ask.extension.org, public questions can be pulled into www.extension.org. They appear in the “Trending Questions” section of the site front page and the individual CoP homepages. For the site front page, a curation team chooses which questions to feature by adding a special “front page” tag to the question in Ask an Expert. Trending questions on the CoP homepages are not curated. They are populated with any public question tagged with the CoP’s resource area tag, sorted by most recent.

Trending Questions on the site front page

Trending Questions on the CoP homepages

We’ve focused exclusively on the editing of public questions in this post, but it’s also possible to edit a question that’s not public. At any rate, if you get a notification that your question or response is edited, it could mean it’s been selected for more public exposure or someone could just be trying to help with a grammatical tweak. Ask an Expert is a collaborative environment provided by eXtension, so make the most of the opportunities to provide the best answers.