2023-2024 — CSU East Bay— Establishing a Culture of Quality Assurance

Campus Goal for Quality Assurance

The main focus of our proposal:

• Certify ten online and/or hybrid courses through the 2023 - 2024 CO QA initiative.
• To have at least 15 faculty members attend some type of QA training.

We met and went above our proposal goals in the following ways:

• 9 courses received QM certification with 6 more currently in progress. 
• 44 faculty and staff attended some type of QA training (see table on Training Completions).

Quality Assurance Lead(s)

• Roger Wen, PhD, Senior Director of the Online Campus
  
  

Supporting Campus Partners

• Provost and Associate Provost, Academic Affairs
• The Online Campus eLearning Specialists, and LMS Administrators/User Support Consultants
• Office of Faculty Development/Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching
  
  

Campus Commitment Toward Sustainability of QA Efforts

• The Online Campus has been working with the Institutional Effectiveness & Research (IER) to put all relevant historical data together in a preliminary dashboard to further demonstrate the impact of QA on student success (from 2018 - 2023). The data shows the the percentage of non-passing grades decreased after QA implementation on all areas, such as First-Gen/Non First-Gen, URM/Non-URM, and Low Income/Not Low-Income etc. 
• CSUEB continues to prioritize quality as a culture on campus. We have supported 21 cohorts going through various QA initiatives. As a result, over 655 faculty received some type of QA training and over 198 courses were QA certified since 2015. 
• OFD/FACET and the Online Campus are well-established campus entities with sustained annual funding and both departments provide robust trainings for the development of instructional faculty. Both departments work to produce and present at Back to the Bay (our annual professional development conference), and additional workshops during the academic year.

Figure 1: Impact on First Generation Freshmen Students.

The below graph is an example from the dashboard showing the percentage of non-passing grades for those courses with Quality Matters trained faculty are lower for all undergraduate class levels. Specifically in this example, there is a 15% difference in non-passing grades between courses without QM training (50%) and the courses with QM training (35%) in freshman classes under the First Gen group.

A Video on Positive Student Outcomes Using Quality Matters.

Summary of Previous QA  Accomplishments

Since Fall 2015, Cal State East Bay has engaged in a number of efforts focused on QM and Quality Assurance programming, training, and support that contributed to the success of our 2022-2023 efforts. Prior Accomplishments include:

• Total 198 courses (9 certified in 23-24) certified as high quality courses by QM and QLT.
• 2019: Quality Matters National "Making a Difference for Students" Higher Education recognition.
• Assessment results: The combined 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 efforts are paid off. When we compared courses taught by QA-participating faculty between Summer 2014 and Summer 2017, the percentage of DWFs in online courses taught by faculty who participated in QA activities [9.60%] is significantly lower than that in courses taught by faculty who have not participated in QA activities [10.47%]. [F(1, 3261)=4.162, p=.041]. We anticipate that the courses taught by participating faculty in the remainder of 2017-2018 as well as 2018-2019 will show similar declines;
• 8 consecutive years of the annual Online and Hybrid Course Quality Transformation Grant Program (QA) since 2014 - 2015;
• 2014-2015 Teaching with Technology Faculty Learning Community;
• 2014: Summer Institute: Journey to Excellence in Online Education (QOLT introduced);
• 2015-2016 QOLT Campus Nominee, Kevin Kaatz, Department of History;
• 2015 College Coordinators for Quality Assurance Faculty Learning Community (QM-based);
• 2014-2015 QOLT Awardee, Kevin Kaatz, Department of History

Training Completions

The following table summarizes all Cal State East Bay faculty and staff that have taken QA training during the 2023-2024 academic year. 

Course Peer Review and Course Certifications

Each faculty member is paired with an eLearning Specialist and they work together to get the course ready for review. The eLearning Specialists conducts peer reviews of all courses before they are submitted to QM.

At Cal State East Bay, there are currently 15 eligible QM Peer and Master Reviewers:

1. Amy June Rowley
2. Andrew Wong
3. Beverly Bondad-Brown
4. Cheryl Saelee
5. Chinglih Jan
6. Erick Kong
7. Kimberly Kim
8. Michelle Rippy
9. Roger Wen
10. Serena Kohgadai
11. Shara Cheng
12. Ashley Skylar (Master Reviewer)
13. James Thomas (Master Reviewer)
14. Keelin Jardin (Master Reviewer)
15. Kevin Kaatz (Master Reviewer)

The table below shows the 9 Quality Matters Certified courses for 2023-2024 Academic Year.

Development of Campus QA Resources

List of Resources Developed

• Continue to develop faculty and students help guides with Screensteps
• Syllabus information sheet that contains information about what to include according to the CSUEB Policy on Course Syllabus Information and to meet Quality Matter Standards.
• Designed syllabus templates available for faculty
• Maintaining a master university template that meets the QA standards 
• Video tutorials for Canvas
• Regular faculty workshops on course design related topics
• Continue to update Online Student Support and Services
• Continue to update Learning Technologies and Services Guide

Accessibility/UDL Efforts

• Canvas Orientation Course - updated to reflect the Canvas environment.
• Online Campus staff took workshops offered by the Online Learning Consortium.
• Offered accessibility training workshops to faculty in an effort to establish an inclusive campus community.
• Continued to train student assistants on using ALLY.
• Continued to use ALLY in all Canvas courses, including training faculty on using ALLY to improve the accessibility of their course content. 
• Trained student assistants continue to assist faculty on their online and hybrid courses with ALLY to achieve close to a 100% accessibility score.

A Video on how to check the Ally accessibility score in Canvas.

Dissemination of QA Efforts— Conferences 

• 2023 Quality Matters Research Online Conference, Kevin Kaatz, The Joy of Faculty Quality Assurance Training, Presenter, Link to Presentation and Hangout
• Quality Matters Conference 2023, Kevin Kaatz, Training Faculty to Create Equitable Spaces, Presenter, Link to Presentation and Hangout
• Quality Matters Conference 2023, Shara Cheng, Growing QM Programs: Experiences from Three Institutions, Presenter, Link to Presentation
• Power Your Purpose, CSUEB’s Women in Leadership Forum 2024 - Leading with AI, Cheryl Saelee, Presenter, Link to Presentation

 A slide from 2023 QM Connect Conference

Next Steps for QA Efforts 

• Continue to encourage and support more faculty members to attend some type of QA training.
• Identify and certify more online or hybrid courses in 2024- 2025 through supporting Cohort 22 who participate in the OHQT Grant.
• Seek additional funding to elevate progress.