By Professor Dominique Parrish (Macquarie University), Dr Chris Campbell (Griffith University) and Mr Allan Christie (ASCILITE Life Member)
This ASCILITE initiative, TELAS (Technology Enhanced Learning Accreditation Standards), seeks to introduce an internationally benchmarked accreditation framework that will assess, assure, certify and recognise the quality of online learning. Previously various endeavours and initiatives have been established such as scorecards1 and rubrics2 to evaluate the quality of online learning and provide guidance in the development and enhancement of online learning environments. Professional associations, such as the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE) have a major role to play in regard to assuring the quality of online learning in higher and further education.
Fifteen months ago we wrote a TELall blog post to provide an update about the TELAS over the past two years. This blog post now provides a further update on developments since the earlier post. To recap, Phase 3, saw the facilitation of extensive stakeholder consultation through workshops with educational technology practitioners as well as the introduction of an online survey. Feedback from this consultation was used by an identified TELAS Reference Group3 to finalise the framework criteria. The framework was subsequently edited by Susan Hoadley from the Linguistics Department at Macquarie University.
At the end of 2019, a series of face-to-face workshops was conducted with educational technology practitioners from Macquarie University and Australian Catholic University. These workshops served as user testing and to further validate the TELAS framework. They also assisted in piloting the peer reviewer workshops that will be conducted periodically throughout Australasia to accredit individuals to be TELAS certified reviewers. Feedback from these workshops endorsed the framework and warranted it as a valuable tool for guiding the design of quality online learning environments.
2019 and early 2020 saw the development of the TELAS website and app which is about to undergo user testing.
Phase 4 commenced at the beginning of 2020 and will see the facilitation of TELAS assessor workshops designed to train and accredit assessors to formally evaluate the quality of online learning under the auspice of the TELAS.
We hope to have further news about the state-based face to face workshops in the near future.
The current framework is available on the TELAS website here.
For further information on this initiative please see the ASCILITE and the TELAS websites, or contact the ASCILITE Secretariat.
1 OLC Quality Scorecard Suite available at https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/consult/olc-quality-scorecard-suite/
2 Quality Matters Rubric available at https://www.qualitymatters.org/qa-resources/rubric-standards/higher-ed-rubric
3 Our thanks to the TELAS Reference Group for their invaluable guidance and efforts: Elaine Huber (USyd), Carol Hunter (CSU), Vebica Evans (ACU), Hilary Wheaton (RMIT), Yvonne Breyer (MQ), Gai Ramesh (MQ), Penny Wheeler (ACU), Dom McGrath (UQ) and others.