OSCQR is Unique

OSCQR is Unique

The OSCQR Rubric is unique and differs from other online course quality rubrics in several ways:

  • The rubric is flexible and extensible. It can be customized. Standards can be added, edited, and /or eliminated.
  • It is not restricted to mature online courses. The Rubric can be used formatively with new online faculty to help guide, inform and influence the design of their new online courses.
  • It is non-evaluative. Conceptually the rubric and process approach course review and refresh as a professional development exercise, to guide faculty in their understanding of improving course design from an effective practices perspective, rather than as a course evaluation, certification, or quality assurance procedure.
  • A course review with the OSCQR Rubric produces an Action Plan that is framed from the perspective of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model, to help reviewers assess and target opportunities to improve the course’s social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence, in addition to the overall online course educational experience. This Action Plan is:
    • Automatically generated by the interactive version of course review rubric,
    • presents the aggregated recommendations for course design improvements based on the review,
    • Assists in prioritization decisions for course revisions based on the estimated time to make those improvements.
  • It substantively addresses accessibility. The OSCQR Rubric integrates accessibility standards based on the recommendations of SUNY’s Office of General Counsel in their 2013 memo, “Accessibility Considerations in the wake of SUNY’s Online Initiatives.” The rubric has been reviewed by members of the FACT2 Accessibility Task Force, and address the legal considerations required to be compliant with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, New York State Enterprise IT Policy NYS-P08-005, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
    • OSCQR integrates accessibility into the process, and encourages online faculty and instructional designers to use the rubric as part of the formative online course design process, not just as a summative review. In this manner, accessibility can be addressed from the very beginning of the online course design and faculty development process.
  • There is no license fee for use of the .pdf version of the rubric. It is shared with a creative Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US. Because the OSCQR Rubric is licensed under Creative Commons, and the Dashboard is licensed under LGPL, the entire process can be shared, used by anyone with no cost, and can be customized to address individual campus environments.
  • The rubric provides examples and suggestions (and citations) for course design improvements for each standard that can be selected from a menu of options by each reviewer to supplement reviewer feedback.

The Rubric is flexible and designed to be used in a variety of course quality assurance approaches.

  • By instructors and instructional designers in faculty development and course design professional development activities to inform and influence the design of new online courses.
  • By an individual instructor to self-assess and prioritize design improvements; to continuously review, revise and improve the instructional design of their existing online courses.
  • By an instructional designer to conduct a formal course review of an online course as part of an online course quality review process at the program, department, or institutional level.
  • As a peer review process, by a team of instructors interested in a peer-review model of online course review and continuous improvement (the teams can be made up of inter or intra disciplinary teams).
  • In a collaborative team model made up of a group of at least 3 people approaching the course review process from their own various specialized perspectives, i.e., instructional designer, course author, and external reviews that might include other subject matter experts (faculty), online librarian, student, instructional technologist, multimedia designer, other faculty.