• Background
• CLASS Project
• CLASS Staff
• General Insights
• Questions & Considerations
• Content
• Development Teams
• Content Acquisition
• Assessment & Grading
• Design
• Introduction
• Modeling
• Presentation
• Interactivity
• Navigation
• Assessments
• National Standards
• Quality Assurance
• Courses
• Features
• Courses
• Copyrights
• Technology
• Building a Course
• See and Say
• There are Limits!
• Influence and Change
• CLASS Courses
• Content
• Extras Designed
• Extras Linked
• Class Assessments
• A Bit of Dreamweaver
• Proofing
• Graphics
• MOUs
• Detailing Treatment
• Course Credits
• CLASS Style
• Publications

National and State Standards

The process of matching each course to national and state standards evolved over the duration of the CLASS™ project. Initially, the Coordinator of Special Projects for the Research & Development (R&D) unit was responsible for providing all of the course development teams with a copy of the national and state standards by subject (History) and/or discipline (Social Studies). The R&D course development team assessed its course's material with regards to these standards.

While the course development teams continued to use national and Nebraska standards as guidelines for building courses. Additional pressures due to the startup of class.com, required CLASS™ courses needed to be mapped with the standards for all 50 states. Consequently, the Quality Assurance (QA) lab personnel took on the responsibility of matching each of the course's contents with the standards of the other states (Two states, Iowa and Rhode Island, did not have state education standards at this time.)

It is essential that all courses that are to be taught as part of an accredited high school program meet the standards for the state in which the course is being offered. In most cases, textbook publishers use national and state standards as key elements in creating and reviewing content prior to publication. Therefore, if online course developers base the course material on a textbook, standards probably already have been considered.

If a standard textbook is not going to be a part of an online course, however, the course developers should become familiar with the national standards and review several states' standards so that they can create guidelines for course content before the research, writing, design, and production begin. Then, if a school official asks about standards, the course developers and/or marketers will know what criteria was used during the development process.

Copyright 2004 - University of Nebraska Board of Regents - All Rights Reserved