Fall 2024 Cohort - Tech4 Teaching & Learning MiniGrant - Culminating Portfolio

ENGR 106: Energy and Modern Life

Quality Matters (QM) Certification and Its Impacts

Course Description

Energy and Modern Life (ENGR 106)

Energy and Modern Life (ENGR 106) is a GE course that was proposed and approved in 2017-18 as an area B5 GE course and in 2024-25 as a writing-intensive and an area 5A GE course. The course was developed from scratch and has been continuously improved over the past six years. It introduces energy-related topics to students from all majors, particularly those topics that directly impact their daily life. I have taught the course every semester since spring 2020 (except fall 2024) with growing success. I started to teach the course with 12 student enrollments and since then the enrollment has rapidly increased to the level that in the past few years, the course has been quickly filled to the capacity early in the enrollment period. Since the spring 2020 semester, 20 sections of the course have been successfully offered. The student feedback has been very positive. Here, I will just quote one student’s feedback: “During my education, I have not taken any classes remotely close to the content presented in this class. This was a tough class for me; I am a sociology major, so it is out of my wheelhouse. However, I really enjoyed learning about energy from an engineering professor. Previously, I had respect for engineering; now I have even more! Furthermore, the diversity of student backgrounds has been increasing. For example, in spring 2024 and 2025, students from the following majors enrolled in the course (out of 78 students): Business (32%), Computer Science (15%), Health Science (13%), Psychology (9%), Art (9%), Communication Science (8%), Engineering (3%), Criminal Justice (3%), Sociology (3%), and many other majors.

Reflection on Tech4 Teaching & Learning MiniGrant Deliverables:

Self Review of Course - Using QM Rubric

I believe the most important concept of the rubric is how all course components, namely course learning outcomes, module learning outcomes, course activities, and course assessments, should be aligned. Perhaps more importantly, how the course map can communicate these alignments and interrelationships to students.

The most challenging aspect of the process was improving the course accessibility and all its components. While all my lectures were closed captioned, other components, such as PDF files and figures, needed improvements.

Analyzed the DFW Rates and Developed a Plan

While DFW rates relative to the course were generally acceptable and within the norm, I decided to create a well-balanced combination of low-stack and high-stack assignments, low-context and high-context writing assignments. I think I improved some of the writing assignments in the courses by increasing the “situational interest” of students by encouraging them to choose a topic that directly affects their community.

Created a Course Map to Demonstrate Alignment

Professional Development Selected to Strengthen Skills and Knowledge --

Building Capacity to Use Data Collected Following Graduation to Implement Effective Programmatic Change (WSCUC Standard 2.11)

An important reason for the unpopularity of many online courses is their low quality. However, like any other teaching approach (in that matter any human endeavor), online teaching and learning are not necessarily good or bad. If it is done correctly, it can be as effective as or even more effective than the traditional approach. This dilemma highlights the need for an effective, unbiased, and universally agreed sets of standards that can be used to measure the quality of an online course.

It turns out that an online class is ideal for this type of evaluation. While class observation is a common method for assessing in-person classes, the observation typically occurs by attending a single class by an observer. This by no means can be an indication of the quality of a course and/or an instructor. A more meaningful evaluation requires the observation of a class in an extended period, ideally an entire semester, which is in reality, impractical. Furthermore, the observation is typically conducted by a single observer, which can limit the scope of evaluation. In comparison, online courses are ideal for this purpose because they are prepared well in advance of the course delivery, and a team of observers can get full access to the course materials and assessments without the need to attend a class for an entire semester. By simply adding the observers to the Learning Management System (LMS) that is used to deliver the course, they can observe and evaluate the entire course, even remotely.

Course Redesign Process and Experience

To ensure the high quality of online and blended courses, several standards have been introduced, including the Quality Matters (QM) and Quality Learning and Teaching (QLT). The former is very popular in the U.S.A., and the latter is developed by the California State University (CSU) system.

Quality Matters or QM is a certificate developed by a U.S.-based institution with the same name, which ensures the high quality of online and hybrid courses. In order for a course to be able to use “QM Certification Mark”, it must be rigorously reviewed using a series of “Specific Review Standards” called the “QM Rubric” [7]. These standards were created according to research-based best practices. Courses that are offered in universities, community colleges, and K-12 schools can be certified [7]. The courses must go through a faculty-driven peer review process. The reviewers evaluate the design of a course (and not its delivery or content) from the students’ point of view. However, they neither observe an actual class nor they assess instructor-learner interactions. Typically, a course is first self-reviewed by the instructor using the tools provided by Quality Matters. Then, the course goes through internal and formal review. The former review is conducted by member organizations and the latter by QM or designated member institutions. In both internal and formal reviews, the team of reviewers is composed of at least two certified reviewers and a master reviewer selected from a database of certified reviewers. In order to make instructors acquainted with the QM rubrics and train them on how to prepare a course for certification, QM provides a wide variety of professional development opportunities, including workshops and faculty learning communities (FLCs), both online and on-site.

The QM Rubric includes 44 standards, including 22 essential, 13 very important, and 9 important standards, each of which is assigned a score of 3, 2, and 1, respectively. A course can receive a point for each standard if it can meet at least 85% of the goals of that standard with no partial point. A course can be certified and use the QM designation if it meets all essential standards and scores 86 (out of the total 101 points) overall [7]. While these standards assess almost all aspects of a course, the main principle is the alignment between the course's various components, primarily the course learning objectives, module (class) learning objectives, learning activities, learning materials, learning tools and technologies, and assessments. Two other important factors during the review are how the course promotes student learning and continuous improvement of the course.

I was also surprised (and pleased) to see how intuitively some of the practices that I have already been using are considered equitable, such as the student has the option to retake the assessment, and I pick the highest grade; there is no minimum or maximum number of students who can qualify for a grade.

Evidence of Online Course Re-Design

**ENGR 106 Re-Design**
Change 1 - Writing Intensive	Change 2 - QM certification
While, in general, I believe students from all majors can learn a lot from the course, the course can be particularly beneficial for students from all branches of engineering. However, for almost all engineering students, GE Area B5/5A is fulfilled by a major course. Therefore, offering the course as a writing intensive could open the course for students who might benefit most from the course. Furthermore, to the best of my knowledge, no engineering course is being offered as a writing-intensive course, and this course could expand the choices all students have to meet this graduation requirement. The course in its original form had many writing assignments, which made it an ideal candidate for a writing-intensive course. I submitted a course proposal (Form A) to convert ENGR 106 to a writing-intensive and area 5A GE course. The proposal was approved by the committees at all levels in 2024 and was offered for the first time as a writing-intensive and area 5A GE course in fall 2025.	The course was submitted for internal QM certification in Spring 2025 and formal certification in summer 2025. The course was QM certified in fall 2025.

Changes in Course Syllabus and Schedules:

I learned how important the wording of course learning outcomes is to ensure alignment among various components of my courses.

**Faculty Biography**
Dr. Farshid Zabihian	About me:
	Farshid Zabihian, Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator, Department of Mechanical Engineering Teaching Interests: Thermodynamics; Power Plants; Renewable Energy Systems; Fluid Mechanics Areas of Scholarship: Fuel Cells; Renewable Energy Systems (Solar, Ocean, Geothermal, Wind, etc.); Engineering Pedagogy Email: farshid.zabihian@csus.edu

**Program Sponsors**
	This work was supported by: US Department of Education Hispanic Serving Institution Project TECH4Equity US Department of Education Hispanic Serving Institution Project STEM4Equity P031C210012 *Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the US Department of Education.