Highlighted NOVA Online Courses

Several categories of NOVA Online Courses are highlighted below.

OER

NOVA received the 2014 WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) award by the CICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies, which recognized five colleges, universities and organizations that implement exceptionally creative, technology-based solutions to contemporary challenges in higher education.  NOVA received this award for its innovative OER-Based Associate Degree Project, which is a comprehensive approach to addressing access, affordability and student success through the use of open educational resources.  The need to increase access to and reduce the costs of attending college is a burden shared by all higher education institutions. One way that NOVA has addressed this growing concern is through the use of open educational resources across the curriculum, embedded in a series of online courses offered through NOVA Online.  The NOVA Online OER courses listed below have no or minimal book and material costs for students.

BB Exemplary Courses

The Blackboard Exemplary Course Program began in 2000 with the goal of identifying and disseminating best practices for designing engaging online courses. Using a rubric instructors and course designers are able to evaluate how well their own course conforms to best practices for Course Design, Interaction & Collaboration, Assessment and Learner Support. Read more in the Bb Exemplary Course Rubric.

QM™ Certified

Quality Matters™  is a nationally recognized subscription-based non-profit organization that certifies the quality of online courses through a peer review process aimed at improving quality of online education. Quality Matters (QM) process has three elements: the QM Rubric, the peer review, and professional development. The QM Rubric has eight general standards and forty-three specific review standards. Twenty one essential specific review standards must be met for a course to become QM recognized.  The courses below have been certified to pass Quality Matters™ standards.

New NOVA Online Courses

The following courses have been designed and developed within the past year and follow NOVA Online course development standards, contain high levels of interaction, contain required pacing, allow for involved faculty presence, and many contain interactive learning modules.