Algonquin's Hybrid and Online Quality Assurance Standards or HOQAS for
short is about providing guidelines for the development and design structure of
hybrid or online courses.
The standards are broken down into 8 general standards and the rubric and
they adjusted really crucial components of a successful course design like the
course introduction and orientation the learning objectives and how they're
presented the student. Assessments, learning materials and learning content.
Activities or practice and and to help students achieve success
it's really crucial to recognize that the reviews are not about a pass/fail
scenario or being assessed on something that you haven't really seen before
it's really about looking at our qualified reviewers who have been
trained to really understand the standards and depth and that are able to
then go into your course and really pull out some specific and and helpful
feedback to help you start to implement those standards.
Completing a course
which has had a successful HOQAS review allows the students to focus on the
learning itself. By that I mean logical, interactive and enjoyable way for
students to be able to really dig into the course content. For example the
consistent and intuitive layout for HOQAS makes the content and
instructional materials, tools and media really easy for the students to locate
anywhere in the course
The feedback I got was was really straightforward in the sense of really
little things that I might be missing for example of how deep was I
burying things for students right and I noticed that I had some things buried
six or seven folders deep so good luck finding that right? And it really made me
ask the question what I really want to be a student in my home course? And
especially when it comes to organization.
On the front end changing your course into the HOQAS review model takes time
okay but it's not incredibly complex it's somewhat time consuming but it's
like checking boxes. But the questions you don't get, the old adage an ounce
of prevention is worth a pound of cure is really relevant here
I teach in ESL, and so I also deal with students where English of course is
not their first language and so the more organized I can be with the simplest
language works well I think for everybody.
All of us using same kind of template really helps. I know I've sat on committees about
this and Student Association has brought up that the number one issue they have
with Blackboard is just that one professor uses one thing and one professor uses another.
We have been developing and teaching hybrid and
online courses at the college for many years we haven't always been able to
reference, or refer to, or align ourselves with a set of well researched standards that are internationally recognized.
There is improved online and
hybrid courses which as we know today is extremely important in this very
competitive environment. Reduce course time development, ongoing faculty
development and quality benchmarking which all lead to the enhancement of
Algonquin's commitment to excellence.