Originally developed by MarylandOnline (a consortium of Maryland colleges and community colleges), Quality Matters began as a Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education (FIPSE) project. Quality Matters is now a self-supporting project funded by subscriptions and other fee-based offerings for colleges and universities who want to assess the quality of their online courses.
According to Quality Matters, more than 400 institutions have adopted Quality Matters as their online course quality assessment tool. These schools include community colleges, technical schools, boards of higher education, traditional colleges and universities and non-traditional online colleges and universities. Institutions in 43 U.S. states and 3 foreign countries use Quality Matters' offerings.
The Quality Matters rubric consists of 40 specific evaluation elements distributed across 8 broad measures to evaluate online courses: Course Overview and Introduction, Learning Objectives, Assessment and Measurement, Resources and Materials, Learner Engagement, Course Technology, Learner Support and Accessibility. Evaluation elements are weighted within each measure on a scale of 3 to 1, with those assigned a 3 considered essential standards for an online course. To meet Quality Matters rating expectations, a course must contain all essential three-point standards and earn at least 72 points overall.
Quality Matters offers a range of training programs to assist course developers with designing their online courses to meet the standards laid out in the Quality Matters rubric. Interested online instructors may also take an online training course to become a peer reviewer for courses submitted to Quality Matters.
As of 2010, schools with fully developed online programs that want access to the full range of Quality Matters services may purchase a one-year subscription for $4,000 to $5,000 (depending on how many online courses are available at the institution). If a school is still in a testing phase, it can purchase a scaled-back, one-year subscription for $1,500. Quality Matters also offers yearly statewide subscriptions for $5,000 a year, and affiliated institutions may join under this membership for $1,000 a year.