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 1.8.

Click here to view Quality Matters Standard 1.8 in the Quality Matters Rubric. This standard addresses the inclusion of a self-introduction by the instructor.

In this standard, QM makes the distinction between the initial introduction by the instructor and the self-introduction by the instructor.

The initial introduction includes the essentials of how the student can reach the instructor and information about the role of the instructor and how to address the instructor.

The self-introduction is a more in-depth introduction that helps students get to know the instructor and extends beyond the essentials. The self-introduction helps students feel more connected to you and the courses as a whole. In an online environment, the lack of instructor to student immediacy may be disconcerting and isolating for a student. For example, this could be a video, a welcome letter, or a post in a discussion board that includes comments on:

• Teaching philosophy
• A summary of past experience with teaching online courses
• Personal information such as hobbies
• Family
• Travel experiences
• Photograph

For more tips on creating an introduction video, click on the following link: http://facultyecommons.org/introduction-video/.

The best location for this information is in 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 1.8 by looking at the Syllabus (for the initial introduction) and the “Course Overview” and “Meet Your Professor” pages in the “Start Here” section (for the self-introduction).

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.