NMU Minimum Standards for Online Teaching🎓

Greetings, faculty colleagues.

This is Stacy Boyer Davis, professor of accounting from the College of Business and your former online teaching and learning scholar.

It's my honor to be here today.

I was invited by the global campus to demonstrate minimum standards for online teaching.

Walking through one of my online courses, bus 576, as an example.

To get started, we're going to talk About General Standard 2.1.

The course learning objectives, outcomes or course program competencies are measurable.

For minimum standard 2.1 course objectives are measurable.

They need to clearly map overall course goals.

They describe what learners should be able to do by the end of the course.

The key word is measurable.

To make objectives measurable, we should focus on observable actions, not vague intentions.

Instead of using terms such as understand, learn or be familiar with, let's use action verbs from Bloom's taxonomy such as analyze, design, evaluate, apply or demonstrate.

A strong course learning objective follows the structure.

By the end of the course students will be able to fill in the blank with an action verb and then following that action verb with the content or skill and under what condition or level of performance.

So for example, by the end of this course students will be able to action verb analyze and what content or skill financial statements and under what conditions to make data driven business decisions.

So this objective is measurable because we can assess the analysis through assignments, projects or exams.

Now in bus 576 course learning objectives are included in the course syllabus as well as in my day one activities I have course learning objectives separately presented and notice as we look at them, read, use and evaluate various authoritative and non authoritative accounting literature.

Action verbs here apply concepts, theories and fundamental methods of research and accounting.

Apply the action verb there accurately, utilize the APA citation language in academic writing, plan and organize an accounting research project and you can see that there are 12 overarching graduate level measurable learning objectives that have been created and align with Our minimum standard The next General minimum standard is 2.2.

The module unit learning objectives or competencies describe outcomes that are measurable and consistent with the course level.

Objectives or competencies.

And now for minimum standard 2.2 measurable module level learning objectives.

Module level learning objectives break the course objectives into smaller, teachable, accessible pieces.

Each module objective should clearly support at least one course learning objective.

A good rule of thumb to ask is if students master this module objective, does it move them closer to achieving the course objective?

Module objectives also need action verbs and measurable outcomes.

For example, if the course objective is to analyze financial statements, module objectives might include identifying key components of financial statements, calculating financial ratios, interpreting trends.

Using real world examples, you can see how each of those module objectives builds towards the higher level skill of analyzing those financial statements.

Now in bus 576, all of my modules or units are all designed by week.

So you might call your module level something other than of course what quality matters indicates.

But in each of my learning weeks I have separate standalone module, unit or week learning objectives.

So these are the seven learning objectives for week one.

Let's just draw your attention to this specific one.

Conduct a short peer reviewed research project, become familiar with using peer reviewed sources, writing using APA seventh edition third person and meal plan writing structure.

That's what students are going to get introduced to in week one.

How does that actionable learning objective align with the overarching course learning objectives?

Well, in my day one activities in my syllabus, as I indicated before, is where my course learning objectives are as well as in a menu here.

But that module level learning objective we just looked at aligns, with several of my course learning objectives including conduct academic literature review, performing peer reviews, accurately utilizing APA citation and read use and evaluate various authoritative sources.

So module level and overall course level learning objectives are not one and the same, but module unit week level learning objectives should map to those overarching course learning objectives.

General Standard 3.1 Assessment of Learning supports course objectives, outcomes, competencies.

While quality matters, Standards 2.1 and 2.2 focus on clearly defining what students are expected to learn through measurable course level and module level learning objectives.

Standard 3.1 focuses on how students demonstrate that learning through assessment.

In my bus 576 accounting course, which I'll take you to momentarily in the Week one module, the assignment here is that and I have assignment objectives as well, but the title of the assignment is ESG Reporting, Greenwashing and Investor Decision Making.

An Accounting Perspective.

This learning activity helps graduate students early on become proficient in locating and evaluating peer reviewed academic research and accounting practice.

Professional academic writing using APA 7th edition citation and formatting standards, strengthen analytical writing skills through consistent use of the meal plan, and then critically examine a controversial and evolving issue in accounting with real world implications for investors, regulators and firms.

This assignment While yes, I may have some assignment level learning objectives, they map very carefully to the weak level learning objectives.

So let's just take one for instance.

Become proficient in locating and evaluating peer reviewed academic research and accounting.

Well, for the students completing this week one activity, they will meet the module level learning objective, perform a literature review for an accounting topic, identify, analyze, interpret and describe the critical ideas, values and themes that appear in scientific accounting research, conduct a short peer reviewed research project, explain the standards that apply to different research environments, describe the ideal timing for performing accounting research, and so forth.

So in other words, quality matters.

3.1 assessments align with those measurable module level learning objectives.

We when we assess right when we're designing those assessments, we should align those assessments so they are measuring those module level learning objectives.

If students are then demonstrating how they meet module level learning objectives, remember those module level learning objectives align with roll up to the overall course level learning objectives so they should all be designed in tandem and in alignment with Quality matters 3.2 is that a course grading policy is clearly stated.

On the next video clip, I will demonstrate how my Bus576 course grading policy is clearly demonstrated for my students.

is my bus 576 course syllabus, and I'll walk through where my grading policy resides.

First of all, I have a list of assignments, how many points they're worth, the percentage allocation for the course, the due date, grand total for the course, letter grade, conversion to percentage and points, as well as a late grading policy for every type of assessment, whether it be an assignment, a writing project, or a discussion forum.

These are all ways to demonstrate a clearly defined grading policy.

And don't forget to include whatever that late grading policy might be.

And if you don't accept late assignments, then indicating that would be part of that clear demonstration of QM3 2.

Now let's take a look at General Standards 4.1 and 5.1.

I'm going to combine a demonstration with both of these and what they read are as follows.

For 4.1 instructional materials will support the achievement of a stated course and module unit learning objectives.

In 5.1, the learning activities promote the achievement of the stated course and module level learning objectives.

For general standards 4.1 and 5.1, instructional materials are textbooks, lecture recorded videos, problem demonstrations, instructor created course content, and for 5.1 are learning activities, assign readings, discussion forums, writing assignments, problem sets, case study analyses, simulations, role playing scenarios, lab activities, collaborative documents or projects and presentations, etc.

Etc.

Fill in the blank.

There are many more.

But for 4.1 the instructional materials and 5.1 the learning activities, they should be intentionally designed to align with course and module level learning objectives so that every component of instruction directly supports what learners are expected to know or be able to do.

Course level objectives establish the overarching competencies and outcomes, while module level objectives break these goals into manageable, measurable steps.

Instructional materials should therefore provide the content examples and explanations needed to achieve the objectives.

While learning activities actively engage students with the opportunity to practice and apply them.

When alignment is strong, readings, lectures, discussions, assignments and assessments reinforce one another scaffolding to create a coherent learning experience in which students clearly understand the purpose of each activity and how it contributes to their progress toward the stated learning goals.

In bus M576, I have the reading assignments listed in my syllabus as well as in every module week.

I include the reading assignments, a list of instructional materials, additional resources that are required, and the learning activities or assessments.

Every week I also send several announcements.

This is an ongoing class that is actively underway, just so you know.

And these are the announcements, I've sent over the last two weeks.

yes, I send a lot of them.

I feel that I should communicate more rather than less.

But for my welcome announcement, for instance, I provide the compelling reasons to pursue, accounting and, or the reasons why they're taking this class in the first place.

I also include the learning objectives for the unit, the module, or in this case week.

I provide reading assignments, the instructional materials.

I also provide some additional information about the course project, give them some words of wisdom and guidance to help them along the way.

And I find that these weekly announcements, I send one at the beginning of the week, one at the end of the week as a wrap up, are very helpful for students, to be able to connect the dots and bridge the gap and understand why the assignments are as they are and how they align with those course and module level learning objectives.

And really that's the true heart of this, is the communication that lies in between those learning objectives and assignments.

So this is a demonstration of how I incorporate General Standards 4.1 and 5.1 in my The final minimum standard is 5.2.

Learning activities provide opportunities for interaction, and there are three types of interaction learner instructor one, learner learner number two, and learner content number three.

I'll walk us through each type of learner interaction in my online course.

Learner Learner interaction can be found in my course in several ways.

Number one, the introduction forum where students are required to introduce themselves and then reply to one another.

It's a graded assignment.

Number two, I have peer review assignments woven throughout the course.

There's a peer review assignment in week two.

There also is peer review in the accounting research project where students peer review one another several times throughout the course.

Finally, there is a research presentation that students present and then they reply to each other at the end of the course.

There are rubrics for each step of those.

Learner to learner interactions.

Now, learner instructor interaction is the second type of engagement.

So students interact with me through a Q and A forum.

I also record videos and I of course, again I use closed captioning and transcripts for all of those, but students get to see me with videos.

Also in the discussion board assignments that we have, I provide a significant amount of feedback.

I also provide a great deal of feedback in all of their writing assignments, returning it to them via educat and also via email.

And finally, learner content interaction.

It's you know, probably one of the easiest ways to demonstrate engagement because students are, you know, learning along the way with all the content that's posted in our course rooms, all of the instructional materials that are provided and the.

As I scroll through here, you can see I have guidance on how to conduct a scientific peer review, how to write in third person, how to construct a narrow research topic.

I'll keep going, peer review checklists, the meal plan, providing a short synopsis with errors and peer reviewed guidance and things like that.

They can interact with all of the content that you supply, the textbook, other resources, professional guidance and so forth.

But you know, those are some of the ways that I've been able to demonstrate to the global campus learner, learner, learner instructor and learner content What a treat it's been for me to spend some time with you today to walk through one of my courses and how I've met minimum and quality standards for my online courses.

Now these quality matters standards can help us not only in the online learning environment, but also in our in person teaching.

If I can help in any way, shape or form with your teaching, I'm pleased to do so.

Please reach out to me.

My email is sboyerdamu.edu or extension 18 5.

Take care and go Cats.