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For-Credit Dev to QA Checklist: Key Differences

Markette Pierce Updated by Markette Pierce

Overview

In May 2023, a For-Credit tab was added to the existing Dev to QA Checklist with the aim of clarifying the steps needed to prepare a for-credit course for QA. This checklist is a reference to guide someone through preparing to hand off a for-credit course to QA, and it attempts to acknowledge variations in standards across programs; it is not training, it does not establish deadlines, and it is not meant to be a soup-to-nuts documentation of any specific processes.

During the months of May and June 2023, a Slack channel called #dev-to-qa-for-credit-rollout is active and includes members of the workgroup that developed this new tab. If this article doesn't address your concern or answer your question, please post to that channel for real-time responses and assistance from that team.

Find below some key differences between prepping a for-credit course and a short course for QA.

Accounting for Variations Across Programs

You will see "where applicable," "if included," or "in alignment with program guidelines" language throughout the for-credit checklist tab. This is because there are variations in standards across the many programs that use for-credit courses, and the aim of this checklist is to be helpful in prepping all for-credit courses for QA. In all cases, use the specific program guidelines applicable to your course as the initial and primary source for direction.

Development Structure Does Not Include QA Version of Course

One major difference between preparing a short course for QA and preparing a for-credit course for QA is that courses developed for university credit do not have the Dev --> QA --> Master course development structure of our short courses, and a QA version of the course is never created. Instead, a Dev course is created, and from it a final shell is created into which students are enrolled.

Where QA Occurs in a For-Credit Course

In an ideal situation, there is enough time to QA an entire Dev course before the final shell is created, but in some cases, the timeline to deployment requires a kind of rolling QA in the final shell itself, with students working in early modules of a course while QA occurs in subsequent units or modules which are typically locked from students until they are needed. Please be sure to communicate any nuances surrounding this kind of rolling access — such as pages that are still in development and will be published at a later date — in the QA tracker and/or the parent QA Wrike task.

Separation of Canvas and Non-Canvas QA Items

To allow QA team members to get to work on whatever is available as soon as it is available, and to accommodate the compressed timelines for QA and deployment we often encounter in for-credit courses, section 1 of the for-credit tab has you sending anything that lives outside of Canvas — SRT files, and course downloadables, for example — to the QA team as soon as they are ready rather than waiting until the course as a whole is ready to begin QA.

This means that you're asked to create both an SRT tracker (line 8) and the course QA tracker you may already be familiar with (lines 24-26). Please still name the course tracker "ABC123 QA" (replacing ABC123 with the course code itself) since QA may occur either in the Dev or the final shell, depending on deployment needs: this is to differentiate it from the "ABC123 SRT" tracker and is not meant to suggest QA is happening in a QA version of the course.

Communication surrounding the copy editing and QA of downloadable tools occurs in Wrike, using the "Copy Edit Course and Files" task.

File Storage Standards

In most but not all programs, downloadable tool files are stored in the Files area in Canvas itself, not on S3. This is because faculty themselves teach these courses, and they may need to be able to edit files quickly and easily. Links to files stored in Canvas are manually removed when creating the course/unit transcripts, and students are instead directed to view them in the course.

Images used in the course are typically stored in S3, which flow seamlessly into the course transcript. Images stored in Canvas Files have to be manually placed in a course transcript, significantly increasing the time and effort required to create a transcript. If your course stores images somewhere other than S3, please make sure that is clearly communicated in the parent QA Wrike task so the QA team can plan for this increased effort during deployment.

In both cases, consult the program guidelines for more details.

Standard Announcements Are Not Needed

The nine standard announcements that exist in 8675309 are not useful in a for-credit course and can be removed. If you need to remove them, go to Announcements from course navigation, click on the three dots to the right of each announcement, select delete, and then confirm delete. You will then see an "Announcements deleted successfully" message confirming your work.

Settings Are Handled at Deployment

Contrary to what occurs when prepping a short course for QA, in a for-credit course the settings (quizzes, grading scheme, discussion settings, available dates, etc.) are handled by program operations at the time of deployment.

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