November 14

STAR Symposium 2017 – Call for Proposals

STAR Symposium photo credit to: https://mnqm.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/logo2.png

There’s still time to submit a proposal to present at the STAR Symposium! This is a state-wide conference focused on teaching and learning best practices. The all day conference is completely virtual – attend and present from your home or campus office. 

Call for proposals is open until November 21.  All presenters will receive training related to effective web-based presentation.

Share your Ideas

Do you have an innovative approach for engaging your students, managing your classroom, integrating best practices or collaborating for improvement? This is your opportunity to share the innovative work you’re doing at your institution, for your department and in your classroom! The STAR Symposium Planning Committee is seeking proposals  related to best practices and innovation related to teaching, technology, course design, faculty support, etc. for face-to-face, blended, and online courses and/or programs. Check this list for ideas for topics:

– Faculty Development and Support
– Course Design and Delivery
– Grading, Assessment and Feedback
– Student Engagement
– Technology Integration
– Measuring the Impact of Best Practices
– Other Innovations…

The committee is seeking both 50 minute and 25 minute presentations which will be offered concurrently. Individuals looking for information about the types of sessions offered last year are encouraged to review the STAR Conference Guide. (http://bit.ly/STARGuide16)

To submit your proposal, please complete this form. The conference planning committee will review all proposals and will contact everyone regarding the status of their proposal in December.

Registration is open!

Registration for the STAR Symposium is managed by Northland Community & Technical College. To register individuals or a group, use the STAR Symposium Registration Link (opens in a new window). The cost to attend the all-day conference is $50 (presenters pay $25).

October 26

Setting The Tone In A Brightspace Course With QM Standard One

Photo credit: www.brightspace.com

Photo credit: www.brightspace.com

Yesterday at noon D2L hosted a webinar on using QM™ Standard One in your D2L Brightspace course to set the tone. Three instructional designers from University of Maryland College shared their experience and best practices.

The webinar team has provided a link for viewing the webcast at any time. Click here to access the recording!

July 29

How to Design Standards-Based Online Courses

David Raths wrote for Campus Technology about two universities that use Quality Matters rubric and how it helped specific faculty members benefit from it.

Bethany Simunich, director of online pedagogy and research at Kent State Online (OH) shares about her institution using QM: “…there are key benefits to designing a whole course upfront. In a face-to-face course, designing and teaching are more merged. You can make more changes on the fly. “With online teaching you have to design it all out ahead of time, and that is the thing that QM helps with so much,” she said. It helps faculty think through not just the pedagogical design, but also about things specific to the online classroom — creating a good course structure and good navigation; inserting the teaching presence into the course; and having students create their own social presence. “I need to purposefully think about all those things before my course begins,” Simunich added. “The QM rubric goes through all of that to make sure I have all the facets of my course. When I design an online course, I think about the entire design before the course begins. When it starts, I concentrate on teaching.”

Read the full article here.

December 10

Quality Matters Course Review Process FAQ

QM logoMinnesota has a statewide subscription to the internationally recognized quality assurance process Quality Matters. What is more, MOQI (Minnesota Online Quality Initiative) has put every effort to promote and help with this process throughout the MnSCU system.

This process is completely voluntary, yet we like to show how it can benefit both face-to-face and online  classes. Even if you do not want your course reviewed, just getting familiar with the QM rubric or having an internal review could benefit you. In this video, you can hear the answers to most frequently asked questions about the course review process from a MSU Mankato faculty member.

More stories can be found on the MOQI webpage here.

 

December 9

MOQI Presents a Virtual Conference – STAR Symposium

STAR Symposium photo credit to: https://mnqm.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/logo2.png

 

 

 

 

Minnesota Online Quality Initiative (MOQI) will promote best teaching practices through an all day virtual conference open to all higher education faculty and staff. They are inviting faculty and staff to share their strategies in course design and delivery, student engagement, technology integration, their assessment practices. The MOQI organization focuses on promoting quality course design in all Minnesota post-secondary institutions.
Please consider their call for proposals for the symposium, where you can showcase your innovative, brightest pedagogical practices.

Hurry in because the proposals are accepted until December 22, 2015.

On February 19, 2016 from 8:30 am to 4 pm, join the virtual conference from your computer or a mobile device. There will be 25 or 50 minutes sessions.
The cost to attend all day sessions will be $50, or $25 if you are a presenter.

To learn more and register, click here.

November 23

MOQI Webinars for the end of the year

Image credit: minnesota.qualitymatters.org

Image credit: minnesota.qualitymatters.org

Minnesota Online Quality Initiative continue with their series of webinars. The upcoming professional development series focus on Quality Matters standards, as well as the interventions for stereotype threats. You can register here for the final four webinars of this year.

Good news is that the group is almost done with their Spring schedule, so we are looking forward to learning more and bringing these to our St. Cloud State faculty.

A big thanks to the MOQI group for providing free, short, and relevant professional development sessions.

October 26

Quality Matters 7th Annual Conference – presentation materials

QM logoThe online education quality assurance organization Quality Matters is holding their 7th Annual Conference.  In case people who are interested cannot make it to San Antonio on November 1 through 4, they presented several options. There are presentation materials available on the website and they offer a few free webcasts (follow the links for specific information).

Meanwhile, I will be preparing more posts on what Quality Matters offers to our institution, so that all faculty interested in Quality Matters can get quick facts on our blog.

April 1

Utilizing Course Shells to Improve Online Courses

By Kristen Carlson

In March, I had the opportunity to present a poster session at the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education international conference hosted by AACE. The session focused on “Utilizing Course Shells to Improve Online Courses”. Through utilizing a course shell (or template), our online courses had the ability to look more unified. This allowed our students to learn how to navigate the course, find documents, and upload assignments the same way, no matter which course they were taking within the department. The course shell is available for all faculty at SCSU to implement within their own course and was created to follow the Quality Matters rubric.

While attending the conference, I was also able to hear how other universities were teaching technology integration to their teacher candidates. The session I found the most interesting was “Coaching for Technology Integration: a Peer Partnership Approach. In this session, faculty members from Houston Baptist University discussed the implementation of a collegial coaching model that helped faculty members integrate active learning and collaborative technology into their teacher preparation courses. It definitely inspired me to think about how we, as a University, could help faculty through a similar model.