Dr. George Railey is in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Success at Alamo Colleges District and along with Rudy Lopez and Amy Gates (instructional designers), presented at the Quality Matters (QM) conference in April. The topic was “Are you up for the Quality Challenge?” Lopez and Gates shared some information about their quality challenge and how they created two design challenges for faculty in their district. The Alamo Colleges District has five colleges and over 68,000 enrolled students with 851 online and hybrid faculty for 300+ certificates and programs. Gates spoke about working in a “data-informed environment.” They gathered data from a January 2020 survey. Students identified areas low on student satisfaction: consistent online instruction and quality online instruction. The Alamo Colleges Instructional Design Team has five members. Together, they conduct course workshops and consultations… for five colleges! Selected faculty for the design challenge receive $1,719.81 at the completion of all Challenge deliverables, and Gate explained that the challenges are “robust time-intensive semester-long efforts.” Faculty received a stipend, and completed APPQMR certification and Peer Reviewer Certification. Gates explained that they worked on a Canvas course. The Canvas course was a hub for discussions, deliverables, announcements, and resources. Gates also mentioned that they used the Design Plus tool. This sounds like a tough and rewording program for faculty. I have been thinking about the QM Peer Reviewer Certification. Gates shared their completion rates with 9 cohorts from summer 2020 through fall 2021 with a total of 189 faculty completing the program. Gates explained that the faculty completed over 14,000 hours and committed to course enhancement! Participants in the Design Challenge seemed to gain confidence and “intentionality in course design” as mentioned by Lopez. They also spoke about how faculty shared feedback and knowledge with instructors on other campuses. Lopez emphasized that the challenge was a “process of continuous improvement… and not a competition… the only person you are in competition is with yourself.” In the summer of 2022, they are piloting the “Quality Course Certification Challenge (QC3)” to submit 25 courses for QM certification (5 from each College). During the questions and discussion session, Gates and Lopez explained that even though some faculty didn’t complete the challenge, they did end up getting their courses reviewed and certified. They also spoke about supporting adjunct faculty and scheduling workshops at different times. It takes a lot of time and planning to design and schedule these workshops… and then to do it for five colleges. I am glad we have similar programs here!
