Online Course Quality Review

As the first step toward a "draft" pattern language for online courses, I recently compiled over 400 "standards" from ten different documents, using the interpretive perspectives from the Online Course Criticism Model as filters. To this I've been adding my own thoughts and the themes from the first online course criticism. More about that later.

One of the outgrowths of this exercise has been an intermediate point between the robustness of online course criticism and the sparseness of most standards "checklist" tools. It is called the Online Course Quality Review (OCQR). You can think of it as a "narrative report card" if that means anything to you (with typical course reviews being analogous to traditional report cards). It is connoisseur-based (like the online course criticisms), but it contains a finite number of prescriptive categories (like the checklists).

I've been using the OCQR recently in reviewing several online courses for a client. The course instructors seem appreciative of the level of detail provided in the OCQR. You can take a look at version 1.0 of the tool below.

Feel free to let me know if you decide to use it or if you'd like to have someone complete a review for you.

Online Course Quality Review version 1.0 [pdf; size=91.8kb]