It’s Quality Matters Monday! Each Monday, we will highlight a Quality Matters standard and review its importance in an online course and how we evaluate this standard.

Today, we are reviewing Quality Matters Standard 1.6.

Click here to view Quality Matters Standard 1.6 in the Quality Matters Rubric. This standard addresses the inclusion of information regarding prerequisites for the course.

A lot of faculty members only include prerequisite courses in their syllabus/course. While it is important to include this information, Standard 1.6 takes this one step further to also include prerequisite knowledge and/or competencies.

An example of this would be to list any specific software or applications that the student might need. For instance, if the student is expected to be proficient in Excel and this skill is necessary for the success of the course, you should include this prerequisite in the syllabus.

Additionally, if there are not any prerequisite courses, knowledge, and/or competencies, be sure to state that in the course as well in order to assure the students that all of their bases are covered.

The best locations for this information are in the syllabus and/or the “Start Here” section of the course.

In our demo course, BUSN 7000 Start-Ups: Venturing into Entrepreneurship, you can find examples of how to meet QM Standard 1.6 by looking in the syllabus.

Click here to access Quality Matters eLearning Marketplace. The Quality Matters eLearning Marketplace is a free, searchable database built to serve the broad QM community with an easy-to-use eLearning product/service directory organized within the 8 general standards of the rubric as well as by user and product categories.