OSCQR: Quality Rubric for Course Assessment

New discoveries in the content area, instructional design, or technology tools a course uses are some of the on various aspects of your course may make the course outdated.  Having a continuous review and revision cycle allows for perpetual improvements for the course.  This benefits you as an instructor, the school with accreditation and academic standing, and the student success.  For this reason, it is best practice to consider a revision cycle for any course, and particularly online courses.

Assessment is key to instructional design regardless of the design model you implement, such as ADDIE or Dick and Carey.  Collecting feedback and reviewing the course is not a measurement of the faculty or developer, but to perform a diagnostic assessment on the design and effectiveness of the course.  It is important to not view the course review as a means to evaluate faculty.  This creates a culture of secrecy and mistrust amount faculty, instructional designers, and administration.  The review is a process for reflection on how we can improve the course to benefit the instructors and the students.  This cooperative approach adopts the premise that courses are not owned by a single person nor are they a direct reflection of that person.  Instead they are developed and improved through a collaboration of individuals with varying specialties with the goal of producing an exemplary course that promotes learning and student success.

In many ways the OPEN SUNY OSCQR Process and Rubric embodies the collaborative approach to course review and evolution. The three step process or framework includes:

1. A Course Review that results in a non-evaluative Action Plan to improve the design of the online course.
2. The Course Refresh prioritizes and targets specific improvements suggested in the Action Plan for improvements.
3. A Learning Review that identifies and determines the next set of improvements for continuous online course quality improvement

This framework is cyclical.  It creates a continuing process that promotes courses using best practices in instructional design, including promoting course accessibility. To that end, it is a tool to assist faculty, professional staff, administrators, and students by providing a process for improving education and student success rates.

The OSCQR rubric is an open resource and can be modified to the individual needs of most any institution and can be applied to more than just online courses. To this end, if you are sincere about developing quality online or hybrid courses, you should be working with your instructional designer or teaching and learning specialist and applying the principles in this rubric.

For a detailed view of the 50 standards in the rubric, please take a look below. Alternatively, these open resourcesite includes notes and short video for each of the 50 standards.