The Need for Quality Course Design in a Post-pandemic World: A Case Study

Online course instruction remains one of the fastest growing sectors in the higher education industry but has been historically stigmatized with poor quality and low standards. Early distance education programs were heavily teacher-centric in design and were used as a means to disseminate information to students at a distance. However, institutions have worked to re-envision distance education through a student-centered learning approach to improve the modality quality. In light of the rapid shift to online teaching as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic response, there is a need to improve practices for preparing quality courses to support student learning in hybrid and online learning formats. There are a variety of quality assurance frameworks and evaluation instruments, such as the Quality Matters Higher Education Rubric, that are utilized to measure the quality of course design. The purpose of this case study is to analyze the faculty and student perceptions of the impact of course design on student learning at a small public college in Central Florida.