Faculty Membership Resources

The University of Arkansas provides resources for faculty through its memberships with nationally known organizations and companies. They provide research findings, national data, best practices, services, events and Web conferences for higher education institutions. Learn how to connect with these organizations.


Quality Matters (QM) Program is the leading provider of tools and processes used by academic institutions for quality assurance and continuous improvement of online courses. University of Arkansas subscribes to Quality Matters and all U of A faculty and staff are eligible to sign up as a member and utilize the resources.

Creating a QM Account

  • Go to the User Account Creation page and enter your UARK email address.
  • Enter “University of Arkansas Global Campus” as the Institution Name.
  • Complete your registration.

Faculty Resources

QM Rubric
QM develops and disseminates the rubric for the effective design of online and blended courses, based on research findings on effective online learning and best practices advocated by leading distance learning organizations. As an institutional member, you have access to the current Quality Matters standards and research that supports them. The Global Campus strives to have all U of A online courses meet the Quality Matters standards.

QM Peer Review
QM promotes a collegial, faculty-driven, research-based peer review process based on the QM rubric. This quality assurance process is used to improve and certify the design of online and blended courses. QM provides a database of trained QM Peer Reviewers eligible for assignment to a peer review team. Courses that successfully meet the QM rubric standards in an official course review are eligible for QM recognition.

Professional Development
The Global Campus Instructional Design team invites a certified QM facilitator to campus and hosts the “Applying the QM Rubric” workshop every spring and fall. It introduces the QM Rubric and the process of using the QM Rubric to review online courses. This workshop is the prerequisite for the Peer Reviewer Course, which is the required course to become a QM Peer Reviewer.

QM provides several other online professional development opportunities including workshops, certification courses, and QM Live web conferencing sessions. Review QM Workshop & Course Descriptions on the QM website. U of A faculty and staff will receive a subscriber discount for all the workshops and courses.

The Online Learning Consortium (Sloan-C) is the leading professional online learning society devoted to integrating online education into mainstream of education through its community. University of Arkansas has an institutional membership to Online Learning Consortium, and all U of A faculty and staff are eligible to sign up as a member and utilize the resources.

Creating a OLC Account

  • Go to the Community Membership page and create a free user account.
  • Once you complete your registration, you will be sent an email and asked to verify your account.
  • Once logged in, click on your username in the upper right hand corner of the home page. You will be brought to your “My Account” page.
  • Click on “Edit Profile” to affiliate your account. Add your organization name, University of Arkansas - Global Campus, in the space provided.

Faculty Resources

Conferences
The Online Learning Consortium offers three annual conferences: Emerging Technology Symposium, Blended Learning Conference, and International Conference on Online Learning. Members receive a $50 discount off the registration fee.

Workshops
OLC provides 7-day asynchronous, 3-day asynchronous, and 4-hour synchronous sessions. Members must be logged in to their OLC account and affiliated with their member institution to receive member prices.

Certificate Program
OLC provides intensive certificate programs that prepare educators to teach and improve online courses using the OLC pillars of quality in online education.

Webinars
OLC provides educational webinars each month on key policy and research issues. All webinars are offered at no cost to OLC members.

Research and Publications
OLC provides access to publications such as, Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN), Survey Reports, Conference Proceedings, and Workshop Publications, etc.

Most services provided by University Professional & Continuing Education Association (UPCEA) address topics directed toward people in administrative positions and involve program development, policies, marketing and financial models. The U of A membership to UPCEA provides a limited number of seats for people to access the membership website. Individual faculty members cannot create accounts.

UPCEA resources

  • Center for Research and Consulting, can assess demand for new programs and identify effective marking strategies
  • Marketing, Enrollment, and Student Services Formal Network, focuses on how to attract and retain students
  • Online Management and Design Formal Network, examines best practices in online instruction and management of such courses/programs
  • Program Management and Innovation Formal Network, focuses on program planning and assessment and is quite broad (includes non-credit programs and K-12)

If a faculty member has a special information need and believes UPCEA resources could best fulfill that need, he or she can contact Nancy Arnold at nharnol@uark.edu and submit a request. Please include your name, title, email address and the content you seek.

The University of Arkansas Global Campus sponsors the institution’s membership in WCET for the benefit of faculty who are engaged in online learning or have an interest in promoting technology in teaching and learning.

WCET stands for WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies. WCET is a higher education cooperative exchange focused on accelerating the adoption of effective practices and policies, advancing excellence in technology-enhanced teaching and learning in higher education. WCET has a growing membership of more than 300 institutions, systems, higher education and government agencies, and corporations in the United States and Canada.

Creating a WCET account

  • Email Cleston Murray
  • Include your name, job title and email
  • Indicate which WCET listserves you want to join

Faculty benefits include virtual and fact-to-face opportunities to connect and collaborate with higher education faculty and leaders through Common Interest Groups (CIGS) focused on:

  • Academic Integrity and Student Authentication
  • E-learning Consortia
  • Student Success
  • Online Learning development and strategies

Visit the WCET website for information about webcasts, Frontiers Blogs, the annual meeting (including archives of key sessions) and Leadership Summits. Also see members only news, discussion listserves and more.