In all products and services, quality matters. COVID 19 and the resulting pandemic highlighted the need to be able to provide a quality educational experience delivered in an online environment. The Boler College of Business was no exception and an initiative began in 2020 to not only deliver the Boler graduate MBA curriculum online, but to deliver it in a manner that would ensure the best possible experience and outcomes for both students and teachers.
Online education is not new. For many years, schools and professional development companies have offered programs and courses online, but the pandemic forced more institutions to pivot to providing online education whether they were ready or not. Delivering online education is not simply a matter of taking classroom curriculum and recording it or conducting live courses via Zoom—quality matters—and so, with Dr. Mariah Webinger, Associate Professor of Accountancy at the helm, the Boler College of Business embarked on a journey to receive Quality Matters certification for all online courses.
Quality Matters is a non-profit quality assurance organization with a goal of helping institutions with online delivery of “well-conceived, well-designed, well-presented courses and programs” through a rigorous system of review and improvement until each course achieves certification. They champion quality assurance in online learning and are now considered the gold standard in certifying the quality of online and innovative digital teaching and learning environments.
“We started with our core MBA curriculum for the Emerging Leader program,” said Dr. Webinger. “This served as the basis for what is now our Online MBA program. All but two courses have now been Quality Matters certified and the final two are slated for completion in Summer 2023, at which time the entire program will have attained certification.”
Faculty are trained and empowered with tools and practices to create and evaluate courses against a rubric of course design standards. Courses are then subjected to a peer reviewed process and faculty receive guidance for improving course quality.
“It requires faculty dedication and patience to undergo this process,” said Dr. Webinger, “but the results are outstanding, repeatable, and scalable.”
The Quality Matters certification process will continue in the graduate programs and soon it will be deployed to undergraduate business programs with online access.
The Boler College of Business at JCU is only the second institution in our region to achieve Quality Matters certification, signaling Boler’s ongoing commitment to improvement and innovation in higher education and to making a positive impact as an online provider.