John Sener, Sener Knowledge LLC;
Member, Quality Matters Academic Advisory Council

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost four years since the end of the FIPSE (Fund for the Improvement of Secondary Education) Grant project which launched the Quality Matters Program. Of course, that “end” was also a beginning and a continuation: the beginning of the Quality Matters Program as a self-sustaining organization, and the continuation of Quality Matters as a growing influence in online education, as Ron Legon described in his commentary.

Over the past several years, I’ve grown accustomed to seeing how Quality Matters has had a variety of positive impacts in ways unforseen when the project started. Originally conceived as simply a quality assurance mechanism for online courses, QM has turned out to be a very effective professional development activity for both novice and experienced online educators. Many institutions have built professional development programs and activities around QM, and many other faculty have used QM successfully for professional development through their individual efforts, as evidenced by the participants in this and previous online workshops.

Besides the extent of its reach, the flexibility of its application continues to amaze me. On one level, Quality Matters is a particular set of processes, tools, and activities which is controlled by a parent organization and which can be adopted by an institution. But on another level, Quality Matters is a concept: an idea which offers numerous opportunities to adapt, customize, and stretch in new ways. Although there was plenty of evidence that this was happening during the grant period, several years later I continue to encounter examples of new ways which QM has been or is being used. In the past month alone, for example, I encountered one consortium which is creating a design template to help their institutions and faculty design courses to meet QM standards, and another institution which is developing ways to integrate QM into its student success program.

This flexibility does not always produce positive results. Recently, I heard about a community college where administrators were using QM course review results as a criterion in the formal faculty performance evaluation process. This is a practice which QM’s creators fought hard to avoid; the QM rubric is a tool designed for quality improvement, not summative assessment. Fortunately, this practice has been stopped at this particular institution, but it makes me wonder what else is happening ‘out there’ in the name of QM. Still, I suspect this is an inevitable by-product of any successful venture which reaches a certain scale.

Also, despite being an instructional designer, I worry sometimes about QM becoming a tool used by instructional designers instead of one used to empower faculty. One reason online education has grown successfully is that it is a golden opportunity for faculty to reflect on how they teach, and not only improve but rejuvenate themselves in the process. If the comments of workshop participants here are any indication, the process of getting involved in QM commonly has the same effect. This ability to create positive change for both students and faculty is one of QM’s greatest strengths, and I hope to see QM continue to be used for this purpose in the coming years as online education continues its steady growth, improvement, and eventually transformation of higher education.