Best Practices for Online Course Design, Student Engagement and High Touch Faculty
Abstract: The Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University developed standards and best practices for online course design, student engagement and high touch faculty in conjunction with creation of an online Masters of Business Administration (MBA). The standards were originally developed and pilot tested during the first offering of the fully online MBA program (August 2013). The standards have since been revised in several iterations based on faculty experiences, student evaluation data and administrative insights. In August of 2014, the Online Committee decided to add Best Practices as both faculty and students requested ideal expectations. Now, standards are considered the minimum requirement and best practices are the ideal. Best practices are organized into 10 Quality Indicator categories as shown in Table 1. Quality Indicators and Best Practices.