Upstate Online Course Quality Review
About the OSCQR Course Quality Review
In 2016 the Office of Distance Education introduced the Open SUNY Course Quality Review (OSCQR) process to faculty departments supporting online degree programs.
OSCQR is a rubric, developed in the Open SUNY system by the Center for Online Teaching Excellence (COTE) for assisting in the review of online courses. It is also a review process for identifying possible areas of improvement in online courses. The SUNY system partnered with the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) to support the use of the rubric in course and program quality review for online.
The OSCQR rubric is used by faculty to self-review their online courses and identify areas in need of development or improvement. Based on this self-assessment, the UpOCC program has devised a number of short, hybrid "Mini-Modules," which target very specific elements of course design, Blackboard tools or features, or issues related to teaaching and learning online. The rubric is employed to review existing online courses, develop and Action Plan for any improvements indicated through the scoring process, and to provide a checklist/framework for final approval of online course quality.
The OSCQR rubric is also used in peer-review among faculty as part of the Upstate Online Course Quality Program. When integrated across academic departments, the OSCQR rubric supports the institutional committment to quality online programs, helping us acheive the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) Quality Scorecard Endoresment for Online Programs.
The rubric itself is comprised of 50 items, organized under 6 essential areas relevant to online teaching. The image below links to the SUNY website for further exploration:
Getting Started on your Online Course Quality Review
The first step in the online course quality review is to complete a Self-Review of your course using the OSCQR rubric, available here:
