Quality Guidelines for Online Courses

How To Use This Document

The developer and the instructor should meet at least once to go over the required course components and make sure that they are clearly understood.

Both developer and the instructor need to initial the Department Chair Review date, and any other agreed upon deliverables located in the Timelines section. Initials indicate that both have read the document and understand the requirements in light of the agreed upon timelines.

This document is also available in pdf (.pdf) and word (.doc) format.

Required Course Components

Each heading below needs to be represented within the course as a link on the left hand navigation sidebar.

1. Start Here File

This is a single page, linked from the left hand navigation side bar, which contains a welcome/introduction to the course, from the instructor.

2. Student Help File

This is a link to an external page that has general help links and information for students. To add it to your course:

• Log into your course, and go to Control Panel -> Add Page or Tool -> URL
• Put "Getting Help" in the title for the link.
• In the Address field, enter: http://www.uvm.edu/webct/student_help.php
• Check the box next to "On the Course Menu, visible on all pages. Link will appear as text."
• Click the add button.

3. Contact information

A single page providing students with a quick link to the necessary contact information. Information should include at least three areas:

• Faculty information, including:
  • List designated online office hours.
  • Email address and a stated turnaround time for instructor response to emails.
  • A phone number
  • Any other appropriate contact information.
• Department contact information - Phone and email for contacting your department.
• CE Advisors - Phone and Email for CE Student Advisors

4. Syllabus

These represent the bare minimum of content that needs to be on your syllabus, in addition to any other material you normally have there. Your syllabus can be put together with the WebCT syllabus tool, put up a s a single html page, a PDF, or as a number of separate page within a content module. However it is done, it must have the below components:

• Instructor Contact Information
  • This should mirror the information listed in the contact page.
• Learning Objectives for the course
  • I.e. after this course is complete, you will grasp these concepts ….
• Software Requirements & Plug-ins
  • Specific software or plug-ins needed for this course to display content other than HTML. This includes material you link out to as well as what you put in your course. Typical examples are:
    • Real Player and/or Quicktime for audio/video playback,
    • Flash player for animated or interactive material
    • Adobe acrobat reader for PDF files
    • Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or their respective "viewers" if you will be posting Word documents or PowerPoint documents.
    • This should also include other guidelines as appropriate – for example, you might have a link to the browser and equipment requirements in the WebCT Gateway page.
• Required readings
  • This should be a list of required books or reading materials.
  • Might also include supplemental readings.
  • This also should include directions for accessing/acquiring said materials, i.e. how to get the material on reserve, if the course pack or book is available only at the UVM Bookstore (and directions for getting there or getting it mailed from there), or if it's available at Amazon, BN or other booksellers.
  • Note that if you have course packs, books to be put on reserve, or books the bookstore should order, they should be requested from the appropriate parties as soon as possible.
• Expectations of time required for this course
  • How much time the students should expect to be spending on readings, participation, discussion postings, studying, etc.
• Expectations of student honesty (plagiarism and online learning)
  • This can be a link to UVM's academic honesty policy.
• Timeline for discussion board
  • Define expectations of frequency, promptness, and quality of post/response.
  • Include a clear rubric of participation, i.e. what's a quality post/response and how much discussion posts count toward overall grade.
• Announcement Policy
  • Explanation of how faculty will make "announcements." Examples might include:
    • Class wide emails (be sure to specify WebCT email
    • Topic in discussion board.
    • Text area on the home page
• Individual communication policy
  • Explain how students should contact you with questions.
    
    • Email
    • Or will you create a public "Questions" topic in discussion board?
• Specify designated online office hours
  • Where and when (examples)
    • I'll be available in this chat room chat room during these times,
    • I'll be responding to email immediately during these times,
    • I'll be on Instant Messenger during these times, with this screen name
• Response turnaround time
  • Stated turn around time for instructor response (i.e., "I'll respond to emails and discussion postings within 24 hrs, 12 hrs.")
• Grading Rubric
  • A description of grading policies for the course. This includes, at the least, an outline of what segments of the course are worth what, i.e. assignments are worth 25%, quizzes are 10%, exams are 30%, etc.

5. Course schedule

This should be one document, in column format, with the following:

• Course topics with dates for when those will be addressed.
• Readings with dates to be completed.
• Assignments with due dates (and maybe point values).
• Exams, quizzes, and papers with dates.

In addition to:

• A printable format needs to be available, i.e. in pdf format
• All major dates (exams, term papers) need to be listed on calendar tool
• The page should be kept up to date and consistent with said calendar tool.
• A link to this page and the course calendar need to be available on left navigation

6. Summative course evaluation

This will be hidden until the end of the course.

7. Academic Honesty statement & Student Copyright statement

This should be a link to a quiz, located on the left navigation sidebar. The quiz contains two questions, including a link the UVM Academic Honesty Policy, as well as a brief paragraph stating the student's understanding of copyright law. The student must answer in agreement to both to pass the quiz. This quiz is available in a format to allow importing into a WebCT course. There is a "screencast" depicting how to import this file into your course.

Timelines

All of the Required Course Components will be completed, and all content in place and ready for review by the Department Chair by                      .

In addition, the following dates are agreed upon milestones for completion (use back of page for more room if necessary):