By Jeff Simmons, IDLA Superintendent
Kentucky Fried Chicken makes each piece of chicken with a secret blend of 11 herbs and spices. The secret recipe of Coca-Cola is supposedly stored in a vault in Atlanta. A quick Google search will lead you to recipes for both that internet sleuths and home cooks have determined is the actual recipe for each.
What’s crucial about the herbs, spices, and secret recipes isn’t their secrecy. It’s the fact that they produce a superior product. While the secrecy may generate some marketing buzz, the true power of a product lies in its quality. This principle is equally important in the realm of online learning.
Quality is something we hang our hats on at IDLA, as well. We don’t put our IDLA branding on anything that we don’t feel meets our standards for students. Our goal is not to only connect students with online learning opportunities but also to provide students with the quality experience they deserve.
Fortunately, our secret blend of quality ingredients is not a secret. We base our programs, courses, and practices on industry-recognized standards. For our courses, one ingredient is the course standards from Quality Matters.
We bake Quality Matters (QM) standards into the design of every IDLA course. Additionally, we submit courses for review through the QM review process. QM review teams are composed of peers from around the country who do the same work we do at IDLA. Review teams run our courses through a rigorous review process to ensure we are providing quality at every step of the learning process.
QM-approved courses receive an official stamp of approval called QM certification. As of the publication of this blog, IDLA has 40 QM-certified semester-length courses! We are so proud of this distinction! IDLA has the 4th most number of QM-certified courses of any online K-12 organization in the United States!
We are proud of the work of our Content Team in reaching this level of distinction. But we’re not done yet. We will continue to commit to quality in everything that we do. Our number of certified courses will continue to grow as the number of quality experiences we provide students grows. Thanks to those of you who have helped us along the way to reach the level of quality we provide today. We look forward to finding more innovative ways to provide quality online learning experiences to students across our state!
