Quality Improvement in Online Course Development: Igniting the Online Teaching Team.

Online courses and programs in higher education, including nursing education, continue to multiply exponentially in the United States. In order to meet accreditation standards and build internal standards of quality in online course delivery, nursing administrators and faculty must keep abreast of evidence and best practice in online course design. Awareness and adoption of online standards of excellence may be a departure from standard operating procedure with faculty adept at creating face-to-face courses and mavericks self-taught in online course development. The Plan-Do-Study-Act process for improvement is a viable and scalable method to achieve national certification of online course quality, improving ability to compete in a dynamic online education environment. Considerations of infrastructure and multiple stakeholder groups are critical to successful implementation. The case of one nursing program that used faculty development, team building, and continuous quality improvement to successfully reach national online quality benchmarks is presented.