We are excited to announce the official launch of the brand new OLC Course Review Scorecard. The Course Review Scorecard is a course-level review instrument intended to evaluate the quality of online, blended, and digital learning. The release of this scorecard continues OLC’s long commitment to advancing quality in education. Quality may not be in our name, but it’s in our DNA.
The Course Review Scorecard will replace both the OSCQR and QCTIP rubrics as the official course-level scorecard of OLC. We know that these rubrics have been staples for many of you, and they will remain available for the foreseeable future. You can still access OSQCR on the SUNY website, and you’ll continue to find QCTIP on the OLC website. Please, use them with our blessing. However, our official course reviews and the workshops in our Center for Professional Learning will be incorporating the Course Review Scorecard into our programming and processes.
You may be wondering: Why a new scorecard? Well, there are several reasons:
First of all, we wanted to develop an instrument that addresses both the design and delivery of courses. High-quality design is crucial to student success, of course, but as we know, how an instructor teaches a class can make or break even the best-dressed course. If an instructor is, say, unresponsive to student inquiries or fails to contribute meaningfully to discussions, there will likely be issues.
Second, our aim was to create a scorecard that was easily accessible to first-time instructors but would also provide a structured pathway for continuous improvement. You’ll find in the Course Review Scorecard that there are 20 indicators focused on essential elements of course design and 15 focused on the more advanced elements. We might quibble over a few indicators being miscategorized, but please keep in mind that our goal was to develop a resource that would not overwhelm novices and time-strapped instructors.
Third, we hoped to address some gaps that we identified in an Every Learner Everywhere-supported meta-analysis of existing open-access scorecards. Drawing from this research, practitioner feedback, and lessons learned from years of quality assurance work in digital learning, this new instrument integrates the strongest elements of existing frameworks while addressing key limitations.
As with our other scorecards, the Course Review Scorecard is available as a free download to anyone with a web browser. The scorecard is remixable and can be adapted to fit individual or organizational needs; just don’t try to make money from it, please.
We should add that releasing the Course Review Scorecard is just the beginning. We already have an accompanying handbook in the works that will be available to OLC members in the coming weeks. We will have workshops through our Center for Professional Learning to orient our community to the scorecard. We will be launching a revised, more competitive course review service for our members. More good things are on the horizon.
We’re proud of what we’ve developed and stand by the Course Review Scorecard, but we know that nothing is perfect. So, we would love to hear from you about your thoughts and experiences with the scorecard. As part of the development process, we have already engaged with many community members for their feedback; for that, we’d like to extend a hearty thank you to the following people:
Amoreena Aspenwall-Fredin, Dylan Barth, Dawn Benigno, Jeanne Catanzaro, Lileen Coulloudon, Lesley Cryderman, Phil Denman, Michael Douglas, Elizabeth du Plessis, Zeren Eder, Andrew Feldstein, Katherine Fisne, John Fritz, Kaitlin Garrett, Joan Giovannini, Amanda González Izquierdo, Catharine Gruver, Josh Herron, Erin Hugus, Rachel Hutchison, Claudia Isela, Jessica Koleno, Sherry Kull, Cynthia Lambertson-Poon, Keegan Long-Wheeler, Jennifer Mathes, Tawnya Means, Mary Beth Messner, Linda Neff, Emily Peck, Crystal Pounds, Cindy Schanke, Lee Anna Smith, Oliver Snow, David Stone, Elisabeth Stucklen, Kit Waffle, Lynn Wahl, Nicole Weber, and Olena Zhadko.
To download the Course Review Scorecard, and to learn more about our other scorecards and review services, please visit the Consulting page of the OLC website.
