ePirate

Does Quality Matter?
Quality is something we look for in whatever we purchase whether it is food, clothing, or anything else we want and have in our lives. Quality is not limited to these items alone; it is also an important factor when registering for a course or finding a college. Since online education is changing the way people take courses and earn degrees, are there quality control devices for online education? The answer is yes!

Faculty at Seton Hall University have been actively exploring distance education as an option for many of the courses offered through the School of Arts and Sciences. Renee Cicchino, Senior Instructional Designer, has been supporting their efforts and leading the Instructional Design team in developing online offerings using the standards set by Quality Matters. Renee's extensive training on how to incorporate the Quality Matters rubric has enabled her to develop a template for all Arts and Sciences online offerings that ensures key components of the course are present.

The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) created by funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is a consortium of institutions and organization which are committed to quality online education. Sloan-C promotes best practices, collaborative knowledge sharing, and strives to improve the quality of online teaching and learning. In addition to their well attended annual international conferences, Sloan-C offers a wide variety of journals, resources including an Effective Practices Database, and workshops.

On February 14, 2008 the TLT Center and the Dean's Office for the College of Arts and Sciences launched a call for proposals for the 2008-2009 Arts and Sciences Online Course Development grants. The goal of this initiative has been to offer online undergraduate and graduate courses to create more flexible course options for traditional and non-traditional students. Faculty who are awarded these grants use Blackboard and a template based on the Quality Matters rubric to develop and implement their course.

Now in its fifth year, the program has been very successful and has received positive feedback by both students and faculty. The Dean's Office of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Center is pleased to announce this year's grant recipients.

Cheating on exams, activities and plagiarized papers are always a concern for those teaching online courses. Is there anything we can do to prevent or reduce the temptation of cheating? The good news is yes; there are things we can do to build an environment in which students are less likely to cheat. The bad news is it takes a little more work on our part and it's not 100% fail proof. Studies have shown there are many reasons why students cheat, ranging from trying to maintain their scholarship, task overload and external factors (family, work, life pressures, time management). How can we foster academic honesty in our classes? While there are several models for plagiarism prevention, they all have three things in common. It is important to note that these items are also best practices when building an online course.

The College of Arts and Sciences together with the TLT Center launched two additional online courses this Fall: Communication Ethics (taught by Dr. Don McKenna from the Department of Communication) and American History I (taught by Dr. Brigitte Koenig from the Department of History).

When asked about his experience developing COMM 2134 - Communication Ethics, Dr. McKenna,