Because Quality Matters (QM)
really is a large scale undertaking, I’ve
decided to work on implementing it in
phases. For me, the biggest thing that I
needed to do to get aligned with QM
was simply modifying the structure and
organization of my STA2023 course. So,
after completing the streamlined oneday training this past December, I spent
some time over winter break doing just
that, so that I could implement the
changes for Spring 2015. Although it
was time consuming, it wasn’t terribly
difficult to move my resources
around. Upon completion, the “new
look” really began to grow on me and
gave my class a better appearance and
feel; but what would students think?
After all the shuffling around of
students during the first week of
classes, I ended up with 99
students. Quiz 0 (a syllabus quiz) and
Quiz 1 were both due on the first week
on Sunday, and I had 83 students
complete both quizzes. I was
astounded at this figure (84% of
students completing both of these
quizzes by the deadline). I knew that
normally the percentage was lower,
maybe in the 60’s to 70’s, so I went
back and checked, and sure enough,
over the past 3 semesters, the average
completion percentage was 71%, and
that was at the end of the term (that
means week 1 enrollment numbers
were probably closer to somewhere in
the 60 percent’s). So to have an 84%
completion rate after the first week was
amazing. I’m thinking that number will
be closer to 90% by the end of
semester. The other interesting
artifact, that I didn’t track statistically,
was that, even with nearly 100
students, I have received far less emails
this semester asking about what is due,
when it is due, and what they should be
working on. This is based on four
sections of STA2023 online vs. the
previous three semesters when I had
two or three sections of STA2023
online. The few changes I made based
on what I learned in the APPQMR
course were well worth the time
invested.
What do other SF faculty
think of Quality Matters?
“I recently took this wonderful
course [APPQMR]. It was probably
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