Peer Review/Online Course Quality Checklist
Faculty interest in the peer review process is down a bit this semester compared to this same time last year. In an effort to get to the bottom of the decline, I spoke with LSC’s instructional technologist, Susan Bentley McCahan who works closely with faculty members who are just starting out with online learning. Susan has noticed that, oftentimes, when she recommends an online faculty member consider having a course reviewed, the response she gets is that the course “isn’t quite ready for a peer review yet”. Of course, the purpose of a peer review isn’t to evaluate a course, it’s to assist faculty in creating a more user-friendly course. Clearly, I need to express that more strongly to faculty.
Susan recommends using the standards of the peer review rubric to create a more simplistic online course checklist to give to first-time online faculty who are working on developing courses. This checklist could also be made available to all online faculty—particularly those who are tentatively interested in having a course reviewed and would like to quickly see how their course might fare before the review itself.
So, watch for this online course quality checklist sometime in the new year, as I’ll be putting it together over the holiday break.
