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 Standards 2.3 & 2.4.

General Standard 2 addresses the necessary components that make up quality learning objectives or competencies, which establish a foundation upon which the rest of the course is based.

Click here to view Quality Matters Standard 2.3 & 2.4 in the Quality Matters Rubric. These standards specifically address the inclusion of learning objectives or competencies stated and written from the learner’s perspective in addition to the inclusion of stating a clear relationship between learning objectives or competencies and course activities.

Written from the Learner’s Perspective (QM 2.3)

Many instructor’s have a tendency to write the learning objectives or competencies from their perspective (e.g., Lecture on the Theory of Relativity). Rather, the instructor should write the objectives from the learner’s perspective so that they know what they should learn by the end of the week, module, course, etc. This can be very helpful for students when preparing for exams, projects, and the next courses they will take.

In our demo course, BUSN 7000 Start-Ups: Venturing Into Entrepreneurship, you can find the learning objectives written from the learner’s perspective in a couple places:

1. The Syllabus:

2. The “Start Here” section of the course:

Clear Relationship Between Objectives and Activities (QM 2.4)

It is important to include a table, list, links, numbering system, and/or narrative that clearly explains the relationship between each learning objective and each course activity. This is helpful to the instructor as you plan your course to ensure all learning objectives or competencies are covered and/or if there are any non-essential activities that you can delete.

In our demo course, BUSN 7000 Start-Ups: Venturing Into Entrepreneurship, you can find the relationship established between the course learning objectives, module learning objectives, and the course activities in the Module Outline 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.