iNACOL’s National Standards for Quality Online Courses (v2) is a rubric designed for the K-12 environment.  As such there are elements of the rubric specific to state and national curricular standards which do not directly apply to higher education (though in fields that require additional accreditation by external bodies like nursing, etc., there is a great deal of parallels.)  Originally iNACOL had adopted the Quality Online Course Standards created by the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB,) but in 2011 they created their own version (iNACOL, 2011).  Their rubric ranges from “Absent” to “Very Satisfactory.”  No descriptive criteria accompanies those levels.  To address this, the Texas Education Agency’s Texas Virtual School Network (TxVSN) created an accompanying Course Review Scoring Rubric which iNACOL publishes with their created standards (iNACOL, 2011).

Review a copy of the iNACOL standards here.

Next, we’ll explore the Essential Quality Standards 2.0 from eCampus Alberta.