2024-2025— CSU East Bay— Improving a Culture of Quality Assurance

Proposal Summary: Cal State East Bay proposed to have 10 QA certified courses and have 10 faculty members attend a QA training. Due to a reduction of QA funds from the CO, we adjusted our goal of certified courses down to 7. Based on this new number, we were able to exceed both goals.

Campus Goals for Quality Assurance

The main focus of our proposal: 

• Certify 10 online and/or hybrid courses through the 2024-2025 CO QA initiative (Later reduced to 7 because of reduced funding from the CO)
• Have 10 faculty members attend some type of QA training. 

We met and exceeded our goals in the following ways:

• 5 courses have received QM certification, with 5 more currently in progress. 
• 20 faculty/staff attended some type of QA training with 19 completing the training (see table under Training Completions). 

Quality Assurance Lead(s)

• Roger Wen, PhD, Senior Direction of the Online Campus. 

Supporting Campus Partners

• Provost and Associate Provost, Academic Affairs
• The Online Campus eLearning Specialists, and LMS Administrators/User Support Consultants
• Office of Faculty Development/Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching

Campus Commitment Toward Sustainability of QA Efforts

CSUEB’s commitment to complement and sustain QA initiatives is demonstrated by its support for the Online Campus. Since 2015, CSUEB has had a total of 23 cohorts go through various QA initiatives. This has resulted in over 600 faculty receiving QA trainings and over 200 courses becoming QA certified. In the past, the Online Campus worked with Institutional Effectiveness & Research (IER) to create a Preliminary Dashboard to demonstrate the impact of QA on student success.

• The Online Campus is a well-established campus entity with sustained annual funding and robust programming for the development of our faculty. Online Campus also works with Academic Affairs to host and present at Back to the Bay, our annual internal professional development conference, where QA program participants present and disseminate their innovations and best practices.
• CSUEB continues to commit funding to faculty learning communities and the base budget for Online Campus operations. CSUEB’s Online Campus eLearning Specialists also serve as QM managers; we are able to do subscriber-managed QM course reviews, which lowers our course review fee by $200 per course. Online Campus funds the QM annual subscription, course review fees, and the training cost for faculty attend QM certified training every year.

Online Campus takes every opportunity to showcase our efforts and achievements in regards to QA.

Elearning Specialist, Cheryl Saelee
 presenting at the 2025 QM Research Conference 

Elearning Specialist, Shara Cheng presenting a QM Webinar on How CSU East Bay Improved Student Outcomes with CourseArc and QM. 

 

Summary of Previous QA Accomplishments

Since Fall 2015, Cal State East Bay has engaged in a number of efforts focused on QM and Quality Assurance programming, training, and support that contributed to the success of our 2024-2025 efforts. Prior accomplishments include:

• Total of 208 courses (10 certified in 23-24) certified as high quality courses by QM and QLT.

• 2019: Quality Matters National "Making a Difference for Students" Higher Education recognition.

• Assessment results: The combined 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 efforts are paid off. When we compared courses taught by QA-participating faculty between Summer 2014 and Summer 2017, the percentage of DWFs in online courses taught by faculty who participated in QA activities [9.60%] is significantly lower than that in courses taught by faculty who have not participated in QA activities [10.47%]. [F(1, 3261)=4.162, p=.041]. We anticipate that the courses taught by participating faculty in the remainder of 2017-2018 as well as 2018-2019 will show similar declines.

• 11 consecutive years of the annual Online and Hybrid Course Quality Transformation Grant Program (QA) since 2014 - 2015.

• 2014-2015 Online and Hybrid Course Quality Transformation Grant Program (QA).

• 2014-2015 Teaching with Technology Faculty Learning Community.
  

  2014: Summer Institute: Journey to Excellence in Online Education (QOLT introduced).

• 2015-2016 QOLT Campus Nominee, Kevin Kaatz, Department of History.

• 2015 College Coordinators for Quality Assurance Faculty Learning Community (QM-based).

• 2014-2015 QOLT Awardee, Kevin Kaatz, Department of History.

Training Completions

The following table summarizes all Cal State East Bay faculty and staff that have taken QA training during the 2024-2025 academic year.

Course Peer Review and Course Certifications

Each faculty member is paired with an eLearning Specialist to collaborate to get the course ready for review. The eLearning Specialists conducts peer reviews of all courses before they are submitted to QM. 

At Cal State East Bay, there are currently 15 eligible QM Peer and Master Reviewers:

1. Amy June Rowley
2. Andrew Wong
3. Beverly Bondad-Brown
4. Cheryl Saelee
5. Chinglih Jan
6. Erick Kong
7. Kimberly Kim
8. Michelle Rippy
9. Roger Wen
10. Serena Kohgadai
11. Shara Cheng
12. Ashley Skylar (Master Reviewer)
13. James Thomas (Master Reviewer)
14. Keelin Jardin (Master Reviewer)
15. Kevin Kaatz (Master Reviewer)

The table below shows the 10 Quality Matters Certified courses or in process for 2024-2025 Academic Year.

Development of Campus QA Resources

List of Resources Developed

• Continue to develop faculty and students help guides with Screensteps.

  Syllabus information sheet that contains information about what to include according to the CSUEB Policy on Course Syllabus Information and to meet Quality Matter Standards.

• Designed syllabus templates available for faculty

• Maintaining a master university template that meets the QA standards

• Video tutorials for Canvas

• Regular faculty workshops on course design related topics.

• Continue to update Online Student Support and Services

• Continue to update Learning Technologies and Services Guide

A video on how to create and use rubrics in Canvas, which assures course quality and addresses QM standards. 

Accessibility/UDL Efforts

Due to the U.S. Department of Justice requiring all campuses to ensure that all digital course materials are accessible to individuals with disabilities (Title II of the ADA), CSUEB has taken significant steps to increase accessibility in courses, campus training, and campus tools.

• Online Campus participated in the Echo Labs pilot program organized by the Chancellor's Office for captioning videos in order to meet the standards for Title II.
• CSUEB purchased a subscription with Verbit Unlimited to continue captioning videos to meet the accessibility standards for Title II.
• With the help of the CO, we’ve acquired Equidox to remediate PDFs to meet the accessibility standards for Title II.
• Via CO MEA, we’ve acquired tools such as  UDOIT and TidyUp to meet the accessibility standards for Title II.
• Online Campus created our own Accessibility Webpage to share Title II updates and resources with faculty.
• Online Campus is hiring more student assistants to help remediate course content.
• We’ve increased our focus on accessibility resources in our weekly newsletter to faculty and staff.
• Offered accessibility training workshops to faculty in an effort to establish an inclusive campus community.
• Continue to train student assistants on using UDOIT, TidyUP, ABBY, and Equidox.

An Online Campus video on how to add alt-text to images in Canvas. 

Dissemination of QA Efforts— Conferences 

• Drivers of Educational Technology California Higher Ed (DET/CHE) Conference 2024 - Roger Wen, Presenter, Link to Presentation
• Power Your Purpose, CSUEB’s Women in Leadership Forum 2024 - Leading with AI, Cheryl Saelee, Presenter, Link to Presentation
• QM Research Conference 2025 - Cheryl Saelee, Presenter, Link to Presentation.
• 2025 QM Webinar - How California State University East Bay Improved Student Outcomes with CourseArc and QM. Shara Cheng, Presenter. Link to Webinar

Next Steps for QA Efforts 

• Continue to encourage and support more faculty members to attend QA training.
• Identify and certify more online or hybrid courses in 2025 - 2026 through supporting Cohort 24 (OHQT Grant).
• Seek additional funding to elevate research and progress.