Quality Assurance in the College Consortium

The College Consortium is an online course sharing platform.  The Consortium facilitates information sharing between colleges so students from one college can take online courses at another college.  In previous posts, I have written about how colleges can participate in the Consortium as “Enrolling Institutions” and as “Teaching Institutions.”  I also gave a presentation about the College Consortium at the NISOD Conference in Austin, TX, and I am sharing additional information here as well.

In this post, I will describe quality assurance strategies colleges can use to evaluate the quality of online courses through the Consortium.  As Enrolling Institutions, colleges allow their students to enroll in online Consortium courses, and students use Consortium courses to fulfill course requirements at their home institution.

Consortium courses are similar to traditional transfer courses, but the home institution records Consortium courses on the student’s transcript as if they are the institution’s own courses.  Because of this arrangement, the home institution is responsible for finding quality online courses through the Consortium.  This post describes how it can do that.

Course Articulation – Syllabus Review

First, the school will need to decide what kind of course credit it will grant for the Consortium course.  Will the Consortium course fulfill the requirement (“articulate”) for a specific course, or will it fulfill a generic Science, Humanities, Math, or other General Education course?

Schools answer this question by comparing the syllabus of the Consortium course to the syllabus of a required course.  For example, a Biology 2203 course from the University of Illinois may count (“articulate”) the same as a Biology 220 course at your school.  Or, it may count as a Science course, but it may not count for Biology 220 specifically.

Each course on the Consortium website contains a “View Syllabus” link that allows students and advisors to download the syllabus.  Schools can review the syllabus for articulation and for course quality.  Schools can compare and evaluate the course description, course objectives, reading requirements, and major assignments.

Responsive or Pro-Active Syllabus Review.  In a previous post, I described how colleges can compare syllabi after a student submits a request to enroll in a Consortium course (this would be the “responsive approach”), or the school can “pro-actively” identify and approve Consortium courses ahead of time.

Institutional Review

In addition to reviewing the similarity and quality of each course, schools should also compare the quality of the teaching institution.  The Consortium website contains several indicators schools can consider to maintain quality and a consistent student experience.

• Accreditation – Each teaching institution can list its regional or national accreditation (such as HLC, SACS, etc.) and its program-specific accreditations (such as CCNE, AACSB, CSWE, and more).  Schools can review this information and decide which schools to select as teaching partners.  Frequently, institutions that have regional accreditation (which is generally considered the highest standard for a college or university) partner only with schools that have regional accreditation.  Similarly, academic programs that have a specialized accreditation may choose to partner only with schools that have the same accreditation.  For example, a Business program that has AACSB accreditation (the highest accreditation for Business programs) may not approve schools with ACBSP accreditation, which is one step lower.  (Note that the information on the Consortium is self-declared, so your school may want to verify on the accreditor’s website that the teaching school is in good standing.)
• Affiliation – Many schools have a special designation based on religious affiliation (such as Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran) or other category (Historically Black College, Women’s College, etc.), and your school may want to partner only with similar schools.  For example, if your school is a Baptist college, it may decide to articulate courses only with other Baptist colleges.  The reason for doing so may be more about a philosophical or religious preference (the desire to support fellow religious institutions) and to provide a consistent student experience rather than about the quality of the course.
• Consortium – Many schools belong to established consortia (such as the Council of Independent Colleges or the Georgia Independent Colleges Association), and your school may choose to approve online courses from teaching schools in these consortia.
• Institution Type – Institution Type indicates private, public, for-profit, or non-profit.  Your school may choose to approve courses from one or more of these types based on preference, philosophy, or consistent student experience.  For example, if your school is a private, non-profit, four-year institution, it may not approve courses from for-profit universities.
• Learning Management System – Consortium courses can be filtered by LMS (Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, D2L, etc.), and your school can choose to approve courses with certain systems.  For example, if your school uses Blackboard, it may limit course approvals to only those that use Blackboard.  Again, this decision is probably based more on the desire to maintain a consistent student experience than on the quality of online instruction.

The Consortium website contains several search filters than can help schools evaluate the quality of online courses and ensure a consistent student experience.

Other (Recent) Quality Indicators

The Consortium website has recently added several other quality indicators.  It is not mandatory for teaching institutions to provide this information (many institutions are currently not providing this information), but it is useful to consider when it is present.

• Faculty Credentials – This link provides information about the instructor’s expertise.  There is currently no required form, so schools provide a variety of information.  Typically, this information includes content that can be found on an instructor’s website:  academic credentials, course teaching experience, area of expertise, and major publications.
• Program Assessment Plans and Assessment Reports – An assessment plan shows how program-level student learning outcomes will be measured, and the assessment report presents the student performance data for each outcome.  Again, there are no required forms, so there are a variety of ways this information is presented.  But it can be useful to see how rigorously the program outcome is being measured and how well students are learning.
• Grade Distribution – This optional report shows the distribution of final grades for that course.  The report shows how many students received an A, B, C, D, F, or W.  While the final grade does not necessarily indicate the quality of a course, the historical pattern of final grades can help students and advisors decide if the course would be a good fit.

External Quality Indicators

Each school considers a variety of data points that indicate quality, but this information may not be available through the Consortium website.  Nevertheless, if your school tracks a quality indicator, your school should consult external sources for that information.

For example, many program reviews, accrediting agencies, and state governments require information such as faculty-to-student ratio, cost per student, average class size, graduation rate, retention rate, ratio of full-time faculty to part-time faculty, and faculty diversity numbers.  If your school consults this information for its own quality assurance, it should also probably consult this information for Consortium courses.

Demonstrating Your School’s Quality

Quality is a two-way street.  If your school expects to see quality indicators from other schools, it should also expect to provide quality indicators as a teaching institution.  Currently, the Consortium has no requirements for any of the quality indicators, but all schools have a responsibility to demonstrate program and course quality, and your school’s online courses will have a better chance of being selected and approved if you can help demonstrate your school’s quality.

Feedback:  If your school participates in an online consortium, feel free to post additional strategies for ensuring quality in the comments section below.  If you are interested in learning more, post a question below or contact me privately via the “Contact” link above.  I am also available for advanced strategic consultations about online consortia.

Lirim Neziroski, Ph.D., MBA is an academic leader and an assessment and technology expert at a liberal arts university in the Chicago area. Contact Lirim directly for additional resources and speaking, consulting, and writing opportunities.