About QM Advantage in Canvas

On this page:

Overview

The QM Advantage custom self-review tool enables instructors to examine the quality of their online courses using the standards from the QM Higher Education Rubric, Sixth Edition. QM Advantage is an LTI app that integrates a Qualtrics survey with Canvas. The tool allows up to three reviewers per course to record their findings in the rubric and add free-text comments. Conducting an informal course evaluation with the tool can help you prepare your course for an official course review to put it on the pathway to QM certification. For more about QM certification, contact your campus teaching center.

Note:
Quality Matters (QM) is an international, US-based, nonprofit organization specializing in standards, processes, and professional development for quality assurance in online and blended learning. To learn more, see Quality Matters.

Prepare your course for review in Canvas

Before using QM Advantage, you'll need to do some initial preparation in Canvas. The following steps are recommended:

  1. Log into Canvas.

  2. Navigate to the course you wish to review. If you have taught the course multiple times, choose the most recent version.
  3. Rather than exposing QM Advantage in the site where you taught the course, create a separate copy of the course for the review. For instructions, see How do I copy a Canvas course into a new course shell?

    Tip: Modify the course name so that it's clear this site is for the QM review.

  4. Navigate to the course site where you will conduct the review. Make sure all of the content for your course has been copied and is available for review.
  5. Add the QM Advantage tool to the review course's navigation menu. For instructions, see How do I manage Course Navigation links?.

    Tip: Place the QM Advantage tool immediately beneath the Home tool so it's easy to find.

  6. To invite other individuals to participate in the review:
    1. Using the Canvas People tool, add each reviewer to the course as an instructor.
    2. Contact each reviewer to let them know you've added them to your review course and would appreciate their assistance with reviewing your course. Include the URL for this KB document in your message so they have instructions for how to use the tool.

Launch and use QM Advantage

Once you've added the QM Advantage tool to the navigation menu of the review course, you and the other reviewers can begin using the tool.

Launch QM Advantage

From the course navigation menu, click QM Advantage to launch the survey. A new browser tab will open and you may be prompted to log into Qualtrics before reaching the survey.

Important:

It is critical that you launch and exit the QM Advantage tool in the manner prescribed in this document.

  • Always launch QM Advantage from the Canvas course navigation menu. Do not copy the URL and attempt to access QM Advantage by pasting it in your browser, and do not share the URL with other reviewers. Launching the tool outside of Canvas circumvents course and reviewer workflow tracking needed to support multiple reviewers per course.
  • Only one reviewer is permitted to access QM Advantage at a time. If you attempt to access QM Advantage while another reviewer has it open, you will see the following message: "The reviewer form is currently in use by Reviewer Name. Please try again later." The survey will automatically close after one hour of idle time.

    If the survey remains unavailable for more than several hours, send mail to qmahelp@iu.edu. In your message, indicate that the survey has been unavailable for an extended period of time and provide the URL or the course ID of the course under review.

Each time you launch QM Advantage, you'll land on a page with information and instructions. Read this page thoroughly the first time you use the tool. After that, click Next to go directly to the table of contents.

The survey proper consists of 11 pages, each with multiple questions. The first page is for collecting general information about the course and the remaining pages are devoted to the general and specific standards covered in the QM Higher Education Rubric.

There are two ways to navigate among the pages of the survey:

  • Next and Back: The Next and Back buttons at the bottom right and left of each page allow you to navigate through the survey in a strictly linear fashion. Click Next to advance to the next page or Back to return to the previous page.
  • Table of contents: To go directly to a specific page in the survey, use the table of contents. To view the table of contents (ToC) from any page, click the menu icon (Menu icon consisting of three horizontal lines) at the upper left of the page. A table of contents menu will open from which you can navigate to another section of the survey.

    To return to the full table of contents page at the beginning of the survey, click Return to table of contents at the bottom center of any page.

Enter data

The rubric section on each page is configured as a matrix with the standards in the leftmost column and separate columns for each reviewer. If you think the course meets a given standard, check the corresponding box in the column with your name on it. You will also see a "Notes" field with your name where you can enter comments, questions, and/or suggestions.

Take care to always use the columns and/or notes fields designated with your name. Do not change or enter data in columns or fields designated for other reviewers.

Create and view a report

To create a report summarizing the review data in the rubric:

  1. Open the table of contents and click Report.
  2. Select the "Evidence" and "Notes" sections you wish to include in the report.
  3. At the lower right, click Next to generate the report.
  4. To save a copy of the report, use your browser's print function to print a hard copy or save the report as a PDF.

Exit QM Advantage

When you are ready to end your current QM Advantage session, navigate to the section called "Save & exit" and click the Save & exit button. Exiting in this manner unlocks QM Advantage so that it is immediately available to other reviewers. If you forget to click Save & exit, QM Advantage will unlock automatically after 60 minutes. To return to QM Advantage after exiting, launch it from the Canvas course navigation menu.

This is document bhir in the Knowledge Base.
Last modified on 2023-11-15 09:43:15.