Internet Learning Volume 5, Number 1, Fall 2016/Winter 2017 | Page 9

improve our online courses and this was part of our effort to improve our overall adult education program. To improve these online courses, we utilized Quality Matters™ (QM) standards. QM is a faculty-centered, peer review process that is designed to certify the quality of online and blended courses (Shattuck, Zimmerman, & Adair, 2014). We had three objectives: (1) to assess whether the adult online graduate courses fulfilled the key components of QM standards; (2) to assess whether student evaluations of their adult education online graduate courses were consistent with peer instructor evaluations of those same courses; and (3) to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the adult education courses. Adair and Shattuck (2015) stated, “Quality Matters (QM) is a belief statement put to practice and made tangible as a system of integrated tools and processes to improve and assure quality in the structure of online courses. The process it entails enacts the following: • A belief that online courses should reflect in their design what research has revealed as important for student learning; • A belief that instructors best serve their students and each other through peer review and feedback focused on continuous improvement; and • A belief that a shared understanding of quality can support diverse pathways to meeting standards of excellence” (p. 159). Internet Learning 8 Therefore, the primary goals of Quality Matters are to promote student learning and to guide continual quality improvement of online courses. The review process is a faculty-driven, collegial peer review (Dietz-Uhler, Fisher, & Han, 2007). The QM process was utilized in this study because it has contributed to a significant body of research. Shattuck (2015) provided an extensive literature review that describes what has been learned from QM-focused research under four major themes: Learning Outputs, Professional Enhancement Outputs, Organizational Impact and the Continuous Validation of the QM Rubric and Processes. This research and its concomitant themes provided background for this current research study, and were particularly useful in identifying literature dealing with learner and instructor perceptions of quality and satisfaction. More specifically, research by You, Hochberg, Ballard, Xiao, and Walters (2014) focused on learners’ perceptions concerning whether QM standards were met in selected online courses and compared their perceptions with those of peer reviewers; research by Ralston-Berg (2014) surveyed students’ perceptions of online course design features that indicate quality and how those results correlated with standards of quality in the QM Rubric; and research by Dietz-Uhler et al. (2007) investigated course completion rates in courses designed in a way that met QM standards. In order to validate the QM standards, it is necessary to listen to students’ voices about course design and their learning experiences (Shat-