QM Teaching Online Certificate Reflection

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This winter I am working toward adding a new credential to my learning: Quality Matter's Teaching Online Certificate. This well-established and highly respected organization has put together a series of workshops that focuses on best practices of online teaching. I have reflected on each workshop as I completed them as a way to model metacognition. This post is the final reflection, 8 of 8.

I'm fortunate to be at an institution that encourages and values continuous learning. As someone who has taught graduate courses for well known universities for 15 years, I feel I have a solid grasp of online pedagogical practices. Still, part of staying relevant is continuing to grow yourself and reflect on your learning.

Having recently completed the workshops, this blog contains my thoughts about the process and content overall. In no specific order, here are my takeaways and tips for anyone considering working toward this credential.

  • Build in space between each workshop. Not knowing any better, or having an understanding of the true time commitment, I scheduled all seven workshops back-to-back. This was a mistake. Some spanned two weeks instead of one (which I'll admit I didn't realize) and that led to double assignments at some points. It's hard to truly reflect on learning when there is no break to absorb content. Instead, often I felt as if I were completing a task, not reflecting on my practice.

  • Be prepared for plenty (PLENTY) of writing. Every workshop contained required discussion posts and written assignments. It was too linear, with no choice to occasionally respond by video, audio, or infographics. 

  • Print the checklists- every workshop has firm deadlines. Each workshop webpage has a link to the course schedule and checklist. These were invaluable. Some assignments need to be completed by the third day of the workshop in order to continue which, quite frankly, baffled me as these were paid workshops. While I do understand the need for deadlines, I don't agree that you should be cut off if you are still within the perimeters of the course run dates. Had I not printed these, I might have missed this. One suggestion I have for QM is to allow each participant 1-2 48 hour extensions. Life and work happen.

  • Workshops are most applicable to those that teach online in higher education. While there was some content relevant and geared toward K-12 educators, it wasn't the norm. There is nothing wrong with this approach, it's just something that needs to be considered.

  • The resources are one-dimensional. One of the design choices that I felt was strong was that all of the resources were provided in a Google Doc for each workshop. You could easily see what was required, and what was optional. That being said, the resources were overwhelmingly text-based (and some of the research was old which, given the speed of how our digital world is evolving, content needs to stay relevant). Best practice and Universal Design for Learning say we should design using multimodality. This isn't happening here.

  • If you teach online courses, you should seek this certificate. While I can only speak for Quality Matter's program and not other Teaching Online certifications, I did take something out of every workshop I was a part of and I would recommend those who teach online to seek programs such as this to strengthen their online pedagogy.



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