2024-2025 — Northridge— Online Course Services ePortfolio

Proposal Summary: The QA program CSUN continues building on our strong history of supporting faculty to implement QLT Best Practices in their courses. We served 27 faculty who had courses reviewed this past year in our eLearning Institutes (24) and our newly launched “Advanced” tier Ad Hoc eLearning Peer Review program. Participants implemented QLT best practices in their course, conducted a QLT self-review and participated in an internal peer review/mentoring. Over 1300 students were impacted by courses directly improved through these programs, with more impacted in the other courses these faculty teach. We also enhanced our CSUN developed QLT Student Survey by adding an open-ended question asking students to elaborate on what aspects of the course were particularly helpful. Finally, we created a new Canvas site resource for our faculty mentors. 

Campus Goals for Online Course Services
There were three main goals for this funding. The first goal was to continue to promote QLT as the campus’s best practices framework by reaching more unserved faculty and new faculty across all departments and disciplines. New faculty were given a roadmap of professional development they could complete within  their first three years, and our eLearning Programs was one of the programs suggested. We achieved this goal by continuing to offer various professional development programming as well as creating and updating resources for faculty such as:

• eLearning Programs (e.g., Get Up to Speed with Online Teaching, summer and winter eLearning Institute);

  A webpage dedicated to QLT with updates about the CO's programs in the Faculty Development website;

  Integration into our programming when discussing quality course design, especially for online, hybrid and technology-enhanced face-to-face courses.

The second goal was to provide continued support for faculty who had completed our entry-level eLearning Programs for their professional development and, if desired, provide a pathway for them to get their courses QLT CORE 24 or fully QLT Certified. To support this goal we provided the following:

• We rolled out our second-tier advanced “Ad Hoc eLearning Peer Review Program”, which we piloted in 2023-24. This program was available to graduates of the standard eLearning Institute who demonstrated a willingness to build on what they completed in the introductory program and included reflection on student survey data collected in the eLearning Institute they completed previously. This could be for faculty’s own enrichment, something for their promotion and tenure dossier, or part of a department or college funding initiative towards course certification.

The third goal was to encourage more faculty peer-to-peer discussions of online best practices and equity-minded teaching facilitated by our faculty mentors. The campus funded efforts for all the following activities:

• One-on-one mentoring and informal peer review of the courses of the faculty selected to participate in the regular summer and winter eLearning Institute and Ad Hoc Peer Reviews.
• Train-the-trainer sessions to continue to provide faculty mentors with professional development to support their interactions with faculty, especially in regard to equity-minded teaching.
• New this year was  a “Peer-Reviewer’s-Resources-eLearning Institute” Canvas site to house all of the resources and documentation for our faculty mentors who conduct peer reviews in the eLearning Institute and Ad Hoc eLearning Peer Reviews.

All of these activities closely aligned with broader campus priorities including the values of Faculty Development. Quality assurance is an integral part of the Faculty Development mission to adopt technology-enriched best practices for the development of our programming and our partnerships across campus.

Online Course Services Lead

• Hillary Kaplowitz, Senior Instructional Designer, Faculty Development, eLearning Institute Program Lead

Supporting Campus Partners
The QA Faculty Lead is joined by the Office of Faculty Development team, all of whom are involved in training and are critical in support of the peer-to-peer professional development and the successful adoption of quality assurance methods to a growing number of online/hybrid courses and eLearning projects:

• Kaitlin Bahr, Health Sciences, eLearning Faculty Fellow
• Star Glover, English, Queer Studies, Academic First Year Experiences, eLearning Faculty Fellow
• Sue Magdziarz, Faculty Development,  Instructional Designer
• Christian Reyes, Faculty Development, Instructional Designer 
• Whitney Scott, Director of Faculty Development

We partner closely and collaborate with multiple units/offices across campus to design high-quality professional development to support faculty in learning both the pedagogy and technical skills for teaching online. These partnerships include: IT’s Academic Technology unit, Universal Design Center, The University Library, The Learning Resource Center, Institutional Research, Student Affairs, Faculty Affairs, and our Student Success Office.  

Campus Commitment Toward Sustainability of OCS Efforts

• CSUN historically has been able to protect matching funding for eLearning Institute participants and peer reviewers. However, given the current CSU-wide budget reductions and restrictions, this funding is not available at this time.

  Faculty Development continues to develop programming around QLT and integrate QLT into other programs whenever possible.

Summary of Previous OCS  Accomplishments

2023-2024: We continued to promote Quality Learning and Teaching (QLT) as the campus best practices framework by reaching more unserved faculty and new faculty across all departments and disciplines. We also encouraged more faculty peer-to-peer discussions of online best practices and equity-minded teaching through our faculty mentors. In 2023-2024, we served 39 faculty members in our two eLearning Institute cohorts, helping them conduct a QLT self-review and participate in an internal peer review/mentoring for their courses for the first time. We also piloted a new advanced version of the eLearning Institute for 16 faculty who wanted to further develop a course they had previously worked on in an eLearning Institute. Additionally, we created and implemented a QLT student survey in our eLearning Institute and collaborated with Online Course Services to pilot a QLT Core 24 Prep Review with three faculty achieving this certification.

2022-2023: We continue to support online, hybrid, and technology-enhanced education through our programming. This year we updated our programs to reflect the updates in QLT 3.0, which involved an extensive redesign of our materials. We also drew from our materials to assist in contributions to the CSU Quality Assurance Resource Repository (QuARRy) from our experienced faculty. In addition, we collaborated with CSUN Academic Technology on a new project to develop a Canvas template for our campus, which was designed with QLT best practices. Lastly, we completed the final course review for our full course review pilot program.

2020-2021: As we pivoted virtual instruction due to the COVID-19 emergency, we encouraged as many faculty members as possible to go through our eLearning Institute with the allocated funds. That required a complete redesign of the eLearning Institute format incorporating a QLT self-review and peer review components. We created a QLT workbook and offered train-the-trainer sessions to prepare the selected eLearning alumni to be QLT peer reviewers. Later in 2021, CSUN also started piloting QLT course certification with a small group of faculty.

2014- 2019:  CSUN made significant efforts to disseminate the QLT rubric among faculty and campus leaders. Some of the previous accomplishments include: integrating QLT in the face-to-face eLearning programs, such as the Institutes and the Online Teaching and Learning series; creating and maintaining a QLT webpage; holding a two-day retreat for department chairs; presenting at the Association for Educational Communication and Technology (AECT) Conference, and hosting peer review trainings and other types of QLT workshops on campus.

Dissemination of OCS Efforts— Conferences 
eLearning Institute Student Survey presentation at the December 12, 2024 SQuAIR meeting (online) by Hillary Kaplowitz and Kaitlin Bahr.

Our presentation included a description of our eLearning Institute programming, the instrument we developed, results collected so far and our next steps (which included adding an open-ended question). Our survey was developed to collect student perceptions of participant’s teaching practices to help us assess the impact of the programming (Kreber & Brook, 2001).

We specifically designed it to encompass these elements:

• QLT items observable by students 
• Equity-minded teaching practices in addition to technology-enhanced practices
• Questions phrased with “I” statement and student-friendly language 
• A shortened survey (15 vs 25 items)

Reference:
Kreber, C., & Brook, P. (2001). Impact evaluation of educational development programmes. International Journal for Academic Development, 6(2), 96-108.

Efforts for Graduation Initiative and the Campus Success Plan
Part of our efforts with OCS includes supporting our campus student success plan, which includes the Road Map to the Future along with the CSU-wide Graduation Initiative (GI) 2025 to improve student, faculty, and staff experiences; foster belonging; and achieve equity.

Facilitate Holistic Student Success is one of the six strategic directions in the Road Map to the Future. Our OCS project proposal will support the eLearning Institute, one of the many programs that Faculty Development engages in to expand equity-minded professional development for faculty.

As part of the eLearning Institute, faculty use the QLT Framework to engage in quality course design for their next semester’s online or hybrid course. Through that process, they reflect on equity-minded practices in their course and have conversations about equity with a faculty mentor in their peer review session. Throughout this process, faculty can develop culturally responsive and equity-minded teaching practices that can help improve teaching and learning outcomes for students.

Faculty who completed our programming on how to integrate eLearning also gained confidence in the importance of considering equity in a more meaningful way in their course design. Faculty are asked to rate their confidence level in the program objectives before and after their participation. For the objective: “Discuss how the QLT framework connects with equity-minded teaching practices,” the average pre-program confidence level was 2.2 and post-program increased to 3.6 (1 = not confident, 4 = very confident).

Training Completions

 

 

CSUN eLearning Institute Completions Since 2020
Since 2020, more than 350 faculty have completed CSUN’s eLearning Institute. Evaluations showed that 96% of participants indicated high levels of agreement that the institute helped them learn how to use quality standards to design effective and engaging courses. Additionally, 96% found that the eLearning Institute helped them find areas to update their courses to align with the CSU Quality Learning and Teaching (QLT) framework. Over the same period, 387 courses were enhanced with these best-practices. This past year 1,329 students were impacted in courses redesigned during the eLearning Institute.

What are faculty saying about the eLearning Institute?

Participant: “I found real value in the eLearning Institute because it helped me focus on the quality of my course design, not just the technology.”

Peer Reviewer: “I believe the participant had a good experience seeing how things could be different in her course to make things more student-centered and equitable for students.”

Course Peer Review and Course Certifications
Individual departments at CSUN have expressed interest in CSU QLT Certification. The Marketing Department completed a previous pilot for full certification of five courses. Last year Faculty Development collaborated with Online Course Services to help design and pilot a QLT CORE 24 Prep Review process to be able to provide another option at CSUN. In our next steps from last year’s ePortfolio we noted that we would like to create a pathway for faculty from completing our eLearning Institute to earning a QLT Certification and explore if departments would be willing to provide the funding.

We accomplished this step by fleshing out the process for faculty to prepare for CSU QLT Certification by first completing our eLearning Institute (including student survey) and making revisions before then doing an Ad Hoc eLearning Peer Review. These two steps should better prepare faculty for CSU QLT Certification.

We also started exploring department-funded CSU QLT Certifications and are currently working with the Systems and Operations Management Department (SOM) to get SOM 306 Operations Management to go through CSU QLT Certification. The faculty member has taken this course through the eLearning Institute and is about to go through an Ad Hoc eLearning Peer Review. After that, the faculty member will do revisions and then proceed to start the CSU QLT Certification Process.

Student Online Quality Assurance Impact Research 
We continue to measure student perceptions of our eLearning Institute participants’ teaching practices with an instrument we developed at CSUN using the QLT Framework. Items were created by the CSUN eLearning Team to capture QLT CORE item themes observable by students. During the last few weeks of the semester, students in courses taught by an eLearning Institute participant completed a 15-item survey to gauge the impact of the program.

• Students reported higher than a 4 (out of 5) on all items, indicating that faculty demonstrated competency in QLT practices.
• Faculty were provided with survey results and asked to reflect on changes made in their course and to generate ideas for future improvements.
• This year we added an open ended question: “Related to the items above, please share with us what aspects of this course were particularly helpful to you (optional):”

Development of Campus Online Course Services Resources

• Faculty Development's QLT page is the QLT hub used for dissemination of our CSUN specific QLT organization, links to the rubric, and dates of the CO QLT trainings. 
• Faculty Development's programming page is continually updated with the most current programs that faculty can sign up at CSUN.
• eLearning Institute page explains how the program uses the QLT rubric for self-review and peer review of a course.
• Faculty Development's Teaching Toolkit canvas site is a self-paced resource that features many resources to support faculty in their teaching.

Accessibility/UDL Efforts
In all our programming, we promote the use of the CSUN Canvas Template with QLT best practices, created by the Faculty Technology Center in collaboration with Faculty Development and Faculty Fellows.

The Canvas template was designed with a 100% accessibility rating and Universal Design for Learning principles that support student learning and user-friendly course design.

Next Steps for OCS Efforts 

• Maintain our webpage dedicated to QLT with updates about the CO's programs on the Faculty Development website.
• Continue with QLT training and implementation by offering various professional development programming as well as creating and updating resources for faculty such as:
  • Get Up to Speed with Online Teaching
  • eLearning Institute
  • Ad Hoc Peer Review Program 
•  Keep recruiting and training eLearning Institute alumni for one-on-one mentoring and peer review of the courses of the faculty selected to participate in eLearning Institute cohorts, Ad Hoc program, and QLT Certification.
• Develop an internal process for tracking QLT Certification, perhaps with a dedicated Canvas site if the numbers warrant it.