Assessing Faculty Experiences With And Perceptions of An Internal Quality Assurance Process for Undergraduate Distributed Learning Courses

To ensure that online courses match traditional classes’ quality, some institutions are implementing internal standards for online course design and quality review. The University of South Carolina created the Distributed Learning Quality Review program, based on Quality Matters’ standards. It was designed to be facultyguided, as faculty buy-in is crucial. In this study, faculty were interviewed regarding their satisfaction with the quality assurance process, standards, training, support, and course outcomes. Results suggest faculty appreciate the standards’ importance, were satisfied with support, and recognized course improvements. They generally felt that effort spent redesigning was greater than anticipated and not adequately compensated.