The Idea of a Quality Assurance System
The Quality Assurance System of the University is a structured manifestation of good academic practice, which describes and builds on existing quality assurance and control processes in the University. The objective of the Quality Assurance System is the establishment of cyclic processes for planning, enactment, feedback and renewed planning which promote and emphasise quality enhancement through the generation of a collective self-critical and self-reflective attitude. This attitude is disciplined by attention to the goals of the University and by data collection and analysis. The structure of the Quality Assurance System ensures that feedback loops link with people in a position to effect improvements in teaching and learning. It is recognised that quality enhancement must often aim at goals which are not easily described and therefore less easily measured. Accordingly, where it is appropriate, the Quality Assurance System uses quality assessment to impose a reasonable degree of impartiality and objectivity by referring directly to specific goals and whether or not they have been achieved. In other words, the Quality Assurance System describes processes designed primarily to enhance practice, but with a view to accountability for outcomes wherever these can be defined clearly. The investment of resources in the Quality Assurance System must be mediated by its contribution to the enhancement of teaching and learning and to public accountability.
The Quality Assurance System articulates purposes and the conditions and strategies needed to achieve them. The Quality Assurance System should show the University and its community that disciplined self-reflection is actually described, reasonably systematic and demonstrably comprehensive. The Quality Assurance System is essentially a structured manifestation of good academic practice that builds upon and describes existing academic planning and reflective processes in the University.
Quality as 'Fitness for Purpose'
The meaning of the term quality is somewhat contentious, but a commonly used definition gives a real sense of the scope of the concept. The British Standards Institute (BS 4778) defines quality as:
The totality of features of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy a given need.
‘Quality’ defined in this sense suggests that the quality of teaching and learning intersects with most practices of the University. The University formulates its purposes to address what it sees as community needs. Educational programs are devised and implemented to meet these purposes and one aspect of their quality may be described as their ‘fitness for purpose’. In other words, the University must be clear about its purposes and have a ‘teaching and learning plan’ to provide the points of reference by which the quality of its activities can be judged.
Quality of Purpose
Clearly purposes may be of different quality too, and purposes must in some way be covered by the quality system a university puts in place. Quality of purposes is assured through the engagement of the University with its community, local, national and extended, including links through the membership of the University Council, and links with professional, employer, union and disciplinary bodies. These links for the quality assurance of purposes are described as an aspect of the Management of Quality. When we think about quality as fitness for purpose, purposes become the central point of reference by which quality is judged: ‘Are we doing what we said we would?’ The possibility of different purposes (not necessarily implying different quality) means that 'best practice' in universities with similar purposes is an important point of reference.
Purposes of Stakeholders
The concept of ‘service’ in the definition of quality above requires amplification here too. In education, the service is not merely performed for the student, the service is performed for others too. Students come to be ‘transformed’ and the transformation is represented in different ways in different discourses; 'value adding' is one representation, 'empowerment' is another. The University acts for the student, and for the community, through its relationship with the professions for example. So ‘fitness for purpose’ relates to purposes for the community and to individuals, to a variety of stakeholders. Quality assurance therefore has two key aspects: (i) clarifying what is happening in our various practices, and (ii) clarifying what our collective purposes are. Both of these are then subjected to informed and disciplined critique. The Quality Assurance System must therefore describe the ways in which practices are conducted, the ways in which practices are evaluated, and the purposes of those practices.
Policy for a Quality Assurance System
Basic Principles of Academic Quality Assurance
The basic principles guiding quality assurance in the University are:
1. Accountability to University and Community
The University, through its Academic Board has a public duty to ensure that its academic practices are of high quality. The processes by which the quality of core practices is examined must be comprehensible and transparent to stakeholders. These processes must also be generally acceptable to all those involved and affected.
2. Systematic practice with justified variations
The Quality Assurance System should be generic as far as possible, but should allow variations to address the different characteristics and needs of different disciplines, fields, areas of study and other practices.
3. Complementarity with academic work
The Quality Assurance System should complement responsible and productive academic work practices. It should not be mechanistic or waste time, but should follow and nurture the responsible and productive academic work of teaching.
Fundamentals of the Method of Academic Quality Assurance
What are the fundamental features of an academic quality assurance process? There are three key features which reflect the work of professionals in other areas which might be called upon by academics.
1. Documentation
The practice of quality assurance must be documented to ensure that stakeholders and others involved and affected are thoroughly informed about expectations, the practice itself, its outcomes, and its links with the improvement of practice.
2. Peer Review
The practice of quality assurance must make use of peer review. In practices where responsibility for quality is distributed among staff with different experience, expertise and authority, the term ‘peer’ must be interpreted broadly. A ‘subject’ for example is not simply a responsibility of a staff member, but of a discipline, a school, a faculty and an academic board. The unifying value which underpins peer review in teaching and learning is the quality of provision to students.
3. Client Satisfaction
Client satisfaction means commitment to the idea of the ‘client’ and the client's rights to service and to provide commentary on the quality of the ‘service’ which is provided. The most obvious client of ‘teaching’ is the student, but there are also other clients we might sometimes describe as stakeholders: the professions, people teaching related subjects, the community and so on. These may not be privy to all or any of the information directly involved in the quality assurance process, but must be satisfied with the general outcomes and more especially the validity of the processes themselves.
Objectives and Performance Indicators
An important feature of a quality assurance system is the linking of objectives with performance indicators. A way to achieve this is to tabulate:
-
Objectives for the area, whole university, faculty or school for example;
-
Strategies for the achievement of each objective;
-
Documentation of policy which expresses or informs the objectives and strategies;
-
Responsibility and timeframe for strategy implementation, evaluation and revised strategies;
-
Performance indicators (qualitative or quantitative) which enable the judgment of the adequacy of the strategies and the appropriateness of the objectives.
_________________________________________________________________