Quality Development and Review (QDR)
Welcome to our Quality Development and Review initiative! We’re committed to upholding the highest standards of excellence in our courses. Learn more about how to have your course designated as quality or high quality, and explore the benefits of participating in our review process. Let’s collaborate to enhance the quality of education for our students.
QDR Process: An Overview
The NWF Online Course Development and Quality Review process enables faculty to work with CITL personnel to design, develop and offer quality courses in a six week time frame. Faculty will be expected to attend scheduled meetings with CITL personnel during this time to ensure revisions and updates are on track.
At the end of the fifth week, the revised course will be reviewed by three members of the CITL team who are certified through Quality Matters. The reviewers will work independently to determine if the course has either “met” or “not met” the required standards. If the decision is that the course has not met the standards, the faculty member may take a week to implement any suggested revisions, and resubmit for a second review.
In most cases, total review time will not exceed six weeks.
Once a course has “met” the standards for quality, the course will be given a quality designation on the FLVC FloridaShines website. This designation will be valid for up to five years. However, CITL will perform periodic reviews of these quality courses to ensure they retain their quality level.
Once a Quality designation is achieved, faculty may also choose to continue to pursue a High Quality designation by incorporating additional standards from the High Quality rubric. The time frame for the high quality level review will be an additional three weeks for development and review.
Course Review Rubrics
The Quality and High Quality rubrics were designed by the CITL to assist in the development and review of courses. Both rubrics can be found below with annotations.
The rubrics cover the following course components:
- Course Introduction
- Learning Objectives
- Assessments
- Instructional Materials
- Learning Activities and Interaction
- Technology
- Learner Support
- Accessibility and Usability
QDR Rubrics:
Scoring
Each standard, for both quality and high quality, will be marked as either “Met” or “Not Met.” Reviewers will make the determination for each standard individually.
Quality – A total of 25 standards. All 25 standards must be met to achieve quality status. These standards align with QM essential standards, plus contain two additional standards required by NWF.
High Quality – An additional 16 standards will be used to determine high quality. All 16 High Quality standards are required to achieve the high quality designation.
QDR Timeline
The following is a schedule for both Quality and High Quality level course development and review. This schedule is meant to be a guideline, as circumstances may require it to be lengthened on a case-by-case basis.
Week 0 – Faculty submits Review Request to the CITL
Week 1 – Faculty will meet with an CITL Instructional Designer to discuss plans for development.
Week 2 – Faculty will begin course development based on Quality level standards.
Week 3-4 – Faculty will continue to work on development and meet with CITL Accessibility Specialist.
Week 5 – Faculty will conclude course development.
Week 6 – Faculty will submit course to CITL for review. CITL reviewers review the course and results will be returned to the faculty member. Faculty member will make any revisions necessary as advised by the review team, and resubmit for review.
At the end of six weeks, if an extension is needed, the CITL review team will meet and provide the faculty member with a deadline for completion. If the deadline arrives and the course is still not complete, the review process will be halted and no completion level will be awarded. The faculty member will be required to resubmit a request for review during the next semester.
Additional schedule for High Quality Level:
Week 7 – Faculty member will submit a High Quality level review request form. A meeting will be scheduled with the CITL Instructional designer, and development will begin.
Week 8-9 – Faculty will continue to develop course based on High Quality standards.
Week 10 – Faculty will submit the completed course to CITL for review. CITL will review the course and return results to faculty. Faculty will make any revisions necessary as advised by the review team and resubmit for final review.