Marjorie Chan, a business management professor at California State University, Stanislaus, has been named as one of eight recipients of the California State University’s Quality Online Learning and Teaching (QOLT) award.
Chan received the award for her upper-division Business Policy course. She is the first professor from CSU Stanislaus to receive the honor, which is in its third year.
Online courses are becoming more common at universities, and the QOLT program is an example of the CSU system’s effort to improve the quality of online education.
“The use of online technologies to deliver courses has steadily increased over the past 20 years, and it will continue to grow and have a major impact on higher education,” CSU Stanislaus Provost James T. Strong said. “Online instruction is not inexpensive, but if done well, it can be very effective and reach students who otherwise may have been excluded due to time and place constraints.”
The QOLT honors exemplary online and hybrid courses throughout the CSU system each year. Courses are evaluated on a 54-item rubric that includes self-evaluation, campus-level evaluation, and student ratings and comments.
Chan earned the award for her Business Policy course, a capstone for graduating seniors in the College of Business Administration. In the course, students team up to analyze an organization’s environment from a top-management perspective to develop and implement activities to address issues.
Chan was credited with encouraging feedback from students, using a variety of innovative collaboration tools including Voki, Blackboard Collaborate, BlogTalkRadio, and others, to communicate with and allow for better communication among student teams. She was also recognized for being clear in explaining and presenting in the unique class structure.
“As this is a capstone course, students have to integrate knowledge from all business disciplines in order to help a company to make sound decisions,” Chan said. “A high-quality online course provides an environment for collaboration, interactivity, student engagement and knowledge construction.”
