Abstract:

Currently, there are a number of popular rubrics that are used to evaluate online courses. These rubrics are often expensive to use and require extended training. This session will focus on a new rubric developed by the Online Education task force at Touro College over the last year. Training is short because the rubric is designed to be intuitive, user-friendly and easy to learn to use. The Touro Rubric for Online Education is intended to be a formative tool so that expert reviewers can evaluate courses and then faculty peers can work with online faculty to redesign or tweak online courses to build toward excellence.

The Touro Rubric for Online Education has five categories that are evaluated: Course Design, Course Logic, Instructor Presence, Learner Engagement, Learner Assessment and Course Technology. Each category consists of between four and fifteen items. Reviewers evaluate courses by giving a score of one (needs improvement); three (meets expectations) or five (exceeds expectations) on each item in the Rubric.

The Touro Rubric for Online Education will be presented to attendees as part of the session. Participants will also be encouraged to use the rubric for their own courses and share feedback and comments via a dedicated online site so that the Rubric becomes a dynamic instrument that can evolve as technology changes and as online pedagogy evolves.

As the norm in university education becomes a combination of classroom, online and hybrid courses, excellence in online courses is fundamental to effectively educating students. We believe that the Touro Rubric for Online Education will enable faculty to be more successful in online course design and pedagogy.

Keywords:

Rubric, online, course evaluation, course design, e-learning.