Introduction

Since its inception in the late 90s, education and course delivery via the web has been steadily growing (Hill, 2012). By 2014, in the United States, more than a quarter of post-secondary students enrolled at public institutions were taking at least one course online (Allen, Seaman, Poulin, & Straut, 2016). Online learning presents a number of potential benefits, including increased ease of access; potential cost-savings, both institutionally and as a student; the development of traditional and digital literacies skills, such as writing or computer skills; as well as better feedback and evaluation, by way of features like online quizzes and on-demand grade calculation (Appana, 2008). For its part, Algonquin College has been working for over 15 years to integrate the use of technology into its programs and pedagogy, including in the form of technology enabled courses—courses delivered in an online or hybrid format.

Provincial legislation requires Ontario’s 24 public colleges to have quality assurance processes in place to ensure that the programs and courses that they develop and offer meet Ontario’s quality standards. At Algonquin College, program-level quality assurance is managed through a framework that includes Annual Curriculum Review (ACR), annual program mix review and program quality review (PQR). PQR seeks to ensure that a given program “meets or exceeds [internal] and Ontario College Quality Assurance Service (OCQAS) standards”[1] as mandated by provincial legislation. At the course level, however, and especially for technology-enabled courses, no uniform standards for quality were in place. Thus, in 2015, after the consideration of existing quality frameworks for technology-enabled courses, Algonquin College adopted Quality Matters (QM) as the basis of the standards for its technology-enabled courses. Titled Hybrid and Online Quality Assurance Standards (HOQAS), these standards were an adapted form of the Quality Matters rubric. The adaptations were made to bring the QM rubric terminology in line with Algonquin College’s own terminology (e.g. replacing QM’s “syllabus” with Algonquin College’s “Course Section Information (CSI)”.); and to make the examples QM gives in the rubric meaningful in the context of Algonquin College. Beyond this, all other QM rubric elements, and specifically the 8 standards and 43 sub-standards, remained unchanged in HOQAS. The 8 main standards were:

1. Course overview and introduction
2. Learning outcomes
3. Assessment and measurement
4. Instructional materials
5. Learning interaction and engagement
6. Course technology
7. Learner support
8. Accessibility

Each standard had between 4 and 9 sub-standards, that could be worth between 1 and 3 points. A total of 99 points were possible. For a course to be considered as having met HOQAS standards, a minimum of 85 points had to be achieved. As well, the 21 sub-standards that were worth a maximum of 3 points were considered as essential standards and had to be met fully, i.e. received 3 points.