E-Campus Peer Review Team

Photo of two people working at a computer together laughing with text that reads: E-Campus Peer Reviewer ECCOE

Faculty are central to providing the distinctive Miami Regionals E-Campus experience to all our online students. Our goal is to have an actively engaged online learning community that brings diverse experience and partnership to the online course development process to promote student engagement and success. A community campus approach will raise the overall quality of course design and provide collaboration feedback opportunities that promote the achievement of student learning outcomes.

Miami Regionals E-Campus is actively working to cultivate a team of Quality Matters certified Peer Reviewers that have professional experience designing online course(s) and teaching online. In this role, you would provide a critical service in providing faculty-centered peer review to certify a consistent quality in online course design at the Miami regional campuses. We strongly believe that developing a strong base of feedback and collaboration will not only benefit the faculty and students in the course(s) being reviewed but also assist in your own professional scholarship and instruction.

What design components should a high-quality online course have? How can instructional design and pedagogical best practices be applied to online courses for course review and improvement? Our course development and peer review process set out to answer those questions. The result is a course review and enhancement model that is achievement-driven and builds on current research and best practices to offer a team approach to the continuous improvement of online courses.

How Do I Become a Member of the Peer Review Team?

All members of the Peer Review team have:

  • Developed a Miami Regionals E-Campus online course
  • Taught a Miami Regionals online course
  • Completed the Applying The Rubric training provided by Quality Matters. Applying the Rubric (APPQMR) is a 1-day training that we can offer onsite or is available in a 2-week online training. 
  • Completed the Peer Reviewer training provided by Quality Matters. Peer Reviewer Course (PRC) is a 2-week online training. Based on your experience with Quality Matters you may need to complete one or both courses.

What Would I Do?

The Miami Regionals E-Campus department currently develops approximately 45+ courses per year that need to be reviewed at the end of their initial development process. We also have many courses that are 3+ years past their initial development and review. We have developed a structured process for initial and ongoing course design review for the online and hybrid courses. You will serve a key role in accepting course review offers for peer review. The peer review will be completed using the regional peer review rubric to provide high-quality recommendations and critique based on the Quality Matters standards. A peer review takes on average 3-5 hours to complete.

What is the Peer Review Rubric?

To ensure that Miami Regionals E-Campus online courses are learner-centered and with a strong design foundation, a peer review team utilizes a rubric as a feedback tool for measurement. The 50 incorporated standards focus on accessibility and course design from the perspective of Quality Matters and the Community of Inquiry (COI) model and help reviewers assess opportunities for social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence in addition to the overall online course educational experience. The Peer Review Rubric is intended to be used for assessing course design rather than the actual course content. The peer review process is performed by a collaborative team that includes the faculty member, instructional designer, accessibility support specialist, and a peer reviewer. The peer reviewer may be an online faculty member, assessment coordinator or instructional designer that was not involved in the development of the course to provide a variety of perspectives and feedback. 

What Are the Benefits of Being a Miami Regionals E-Campus Peer Reviewer?

  • Serving as a Miami Regional E-Campus Peer Reviewer provides a necessary service as an active scholar and teaching mentor through the ongoing implementation of best practices in online learning to the campus.
  • The Miami Regionals E-Campus Office will provide the training registration fees and materials to complete the training necessary to apply to earn your certification.
  • The Miami Regionals E-Campus Office will provide a stipend for each course review that is accepted and successfully completed. 
  • Once you have earned your Quality Matters Peer Review certification, you will be eligible to serve on a Quality Matters Peer Review team to conduct official outside Peer Reviews with other institutions.

What's Next?

  • Please contact Miami Regionals E-Campus Director, Julie Straub (straubjm@miamioh.edu) in the E-Campus office to get connected with the Peer Review Team