Going Online: Building Your Business Law Course Using the Quality Matters Rubric

• Published date: 01 March 2014
• Date: 01 March 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jlse.12008
• Author: Barbara W. Altman,Lucas Loafman

Journal of Legal Studies Education

Volume 31, Issue 1, 21–54, Winter 2014

Going Online: Building Your

Business Law Course Using the

Quality Matters Rubric

Lucas Loafman* and Barbara W. Altman**

I. Introduction

Any drive along a major highway, watching television, or surfing the Inter-

net will bombard a person with marketing messages for this or that online

school or program. Given recent trends, there is a high probability that most

university faculty members will either have the opportunity, or be required,

to teach online at some point in their careers if they have not already.1For a

new professor just getting initiated in higher education or an established one

whose school is considering online offerings, one of the essential questions

that must be addressed about online teaching is “How do we do it?” The

focus of this article will answer that question using the authors’ experiences

with the implementation of the Quality Matters (QM) Rubric at Texas A&M

*Assistant Professor of Management, Management & Marketing Department Chair, Texas A&M

University-Central Texas.

**Assistant Professor of Management, College of Business Online Coordinator, Texas A&M

University-Central Texas.

1See I. Elaine Allen & Jeff Seaman, Going the Distance: Online Education in the

United States, 2011,Babson Survey Research Group (Nov. 2011) available at

http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/goingthedistance.pdf. In the fall of 2010, al-

most one-third (31.3 percent) of all collegiate students took at least one online course. This

number was up 10.1 percent from 2009, which actually represented the second slowest growth

rate for the nine years this survey had been conducted. Id. at 11. In 2010, the survey also showed

one of the most favorable results for value and online legitimacy among faculty in the nine

years of the survey. Id. at 17. At the most recent Southern Academy of Legal Studies in Business

conference, the audience indicated that about a third have taught courses online. An additional

third anticipated they would teach online during their careers, thus providing evidence of the

actual and expected growth in online education.

C2014 The Authors

Journal of Legal Studies Education C2014 Academy of Legal Studies in Business

21

22 Vol. 31 / The Journal of Legal Studies Education

University-Central Texas (A&M-Central Texas), specifically showing exam-

ples from Business law courses that reflect QM practices.

II. The QM Rubric as a Foundational Tool for

Online Courses

After gaining statutory independence from Tarleton State University in 2009,

A&M-Central Texas was authorized to begin offering online courses for the

first time in several years. As a young institution with a diverse student body,

starting to teach and grow online was a logical strategic choice at the time,

but the university had no plan or real online infrastructure at that time, other

than access to Tarleton’s WebCT Learning Management System (LMS).2In

the fall of 2010, the university filed its first “Institutional Plan for Distance

Education” (Plan) with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board,

hired its first director of distance learning, and also hired a faculty member

in the School of Business Administration (SOBA) with the hybrid role of

faculty member and “online coordinator.”3The university’s Plan identified

ten online programs within SOBA that would be “rolled out” over a two-year

period to better serve the diverse student population and spur continued

growth as a university.4

The new director of distance learning and SOBA online coordinator

felt strongly in drafting the Plan that the university’s online programs needed

to be grounded in quality standards. After considering the options that

2See BrandonWhite&JohannAriLarusson,Strategic Directives for Learning Management Sys-

tem Planning,Educause Research Bull., at 2 (Sept. 21, 2010), available at http://www.

educause.edu/library/resources/strategic-directives-learning-management-system-planning

(stating that LMS’s are “an online, digital environment that allows information to be shared

between students and faculty and provides access to content and administrative features for

specific courses”).

3The idea behind this hybrid position was that a faculty member skilled in online delivery could

best mentor other faculty members in that “art” and be a catalyst for distance education programs

growing within the school.

4Given the proximity to a major military instillation, and the fact that about 45 percent of the

student population has military ties, the need arose to make sure that military students would

be able to finish a degree that may have started on campus, but due to being transferred or

deployed, they could not ordinarily finish with A&M-Central Texas. A student with a military tie

is usually one on active duty, a spouse, or one retired from service.

2014 / Going Online 23

existed for developed online standards,5three sets of online standards were

considered at the time for adoption: The Quality Matters Program’s “Quality

Rubric,” the Sloan Consortium’s “Five Pillars of Quality Online Education,”6

and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s “Principles of Good

Practice.”7While all three organizations have drafted excellent guides for

quality online education, the decision was made to adopt the QM Rubric as

the foundational tool for building quality online courses due to the extensive

research base on which it is built, as well as its widespread adoption, both of

which are discussed in greater detail below.

A. The QM Rubric/Program Development Histor y and Value

The QM Rubric was developed via a Department of Education “Fund for the

Improvement of Postsecondary Education” grant to Maryland Online, Inc., a

consortium of Maryland community colleges and senior institutions, known

for their long-standing leadership in online education. 8The initial intention

of the four-year grant, 2003–06, was to synthesize the viable research to date

on online delivery and develop a comprehensive set of standards that could be

replicated by junior colleges and higher education institutions in designing

their online courses. From this concerted effort, the first QM Rubric was

published in 2006 with a goal to update it every two to three years, given

that the research and established “best practices” in the field is still being

refined.9Maryland Online, the original grant recipient, spun off QM into

5It is not uncommon for universities to develop their own online standards, but resource con-

straints and the quick implementation needed prohibited that option here.

6Quality Framework Narrative, the Five Pillars,The Sloan Consortium, http://

sloanconsortium.org/Quality_Framework_Narrative_5_pillars (last visited Aug. 25, 2013).

7Guide for Incorporating the Principles of Good Practice into Electronically Based Courses,

Texas Higher Educ. Coordinating Board (Mar. 28, 2002), http://www.

thecb.state.tx.us/index.cfm?objectid=7DD2D689-D394-7F62-323849CFD5C64F29.

8QM Grant Project Information Sheet,Quality Matters, http://www.qmprogram.org/research-

grants/fipse/info-sheet (last visited Aug. 25, 2013).

9The process for updating the QM Rubric includes a review of the scholarly research since

the previous Rubric was developed and a panel of distance education experts reviewing

this literature and making suggestions for standard updates. See Kay Shattuck & William C.

Diehl, Introduction to QM Survey of the Literature,Quality Matters (July 12, 2011), http://

www.qmprogram.org/files/Introduction%20to%20QM%20survey%20of%20the%20literature

%20in%20prep%20for%202011%20Edition%20of%20the%20Rubric_0.pdf (describing the

review and research process used in the latest 2011 Rubric update).