Created by Maryland University, the Quality Matters (QM) rubric looks at 8 standards of instructional design. Standards cover:
- how learners are introduced to the course
- learning objectives
- assessments/measurement
- instructional materials
- activities/interaction
- technology
- learner support
- accessibility/usability.
Our institution subscribes to QM and you are thus able to download a free copy of the rubric. Please come see me if you’d like to learn more about that. For more value, consider purchasing the QM rubric workbook, for the copious annotations and examples of quality design in online education.
QM is not just a quality assurance tool though.
- One particularly useful aspect of the QM website is the research library, which allows you to locate studies that helped shape the rubric. I often go back to that library and I highly recommend that you bookmark it if you work with eLearning day in and day out.
- For your professional development, QM offers a variety of workshops and courses, and helps you determine which opportunity serves you best through a decision tree.
- QM offers a nationally-recognized course-design certification, should you choose to pursue that for your eLearning course.
Although the QM rubric is the golden standard in eLearning and is backed up by years and years of research (as a matter of fact, it got its start as a FIPSE grant), it is a growing tool. I hope to see it incorporate copyright (in the context of instructional resources), as well as weight and learner-hour distribution (in the context of instruction and assessment). Also, its point system is useful for official course design reviews but can be intimidating to faculty that simply use the rubric as a guide.
For more details, consider the following videos:
1. QM Quality Matters Overview Presentation (Video, 4’42’; no audio)
2. Quality Matters Workshop Introduction (Video, 15′)
See also: Chico Rubric, OLC Pillars, and OLC Quality Scorecard.
