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QUALITY MANAGEMENT
ACCREDITATION AND
ASSESSMENT METHODS


Institutions of higher education everywhere are under increasing pressure from funding agencies, students and employers both to demonstrate achievement of good standards of quality, and to provide increasing educational quality at no greater cost. Quality management systems - particularly, quality control and assurance systems - provide institutional managers with the means of reaching and maintaining higher academic standards, and being able to obtain recognition of achievements by presenting these systems for independent external evaluation.

Our approach to quality assurance of educational provision - taking "continuous improvement" as our definition of quality - begins with the involvement of teaching staff in critical self-evaluation of the courses and degree programmes which they teach: reviewing course and programme objectives, learning outcomes, learning methods, resources, assessment methods and other components. This self-evaluation is based on data which include, vitally, the views of students and of external stakeholders such as employers, and outputs such as degree results and employment. Faculty and institutional systems then build on this self-evaluation process, to identify weaknesses and to work towards improvements. These systems will involve peer review, in many cases also involving external experts.

Quality management can also be the means of radically transforming the organisation, by using quality processes to explore basic questions about the organisation's structure and purposes.

The evaluation of university research requires, in our view, an approach which is based on output data rather than a self-evaluation, and then is always subjected to external peer review.

Universitas has worked in a number of countries on the development of institutional quality management systems, and has also advised on the operation of national-level assessment systems for teaching, research and for whole institutions. These national assessment systems are, in our experience, only satisfactory when they build upon existing institutional quality assurance systems; this is certainly the way in which we think they can help to strengthen quality within the institutions.

Dr David Billing, a Universitas Senior Consultant, writes:


"I was Project Team Leader for Universitas projects in Turkey (1997) and Bulgaria (1998/99), working with UK consultants and in Bulgaria also local consultants. This vantage point has produced some interesting insights into the importing of foreign models of quality assurance. Firstly, on national-level projects, it is important to ensure that the institutions are 'sold' the project and are involved fully in its implementation as participants in thinking and design, rather than 'victims' of the national arrangements to be set up. This can be difficult, as the staff will want to be convinced that the work involved in quality assurance is worthwhile. There are many political issues here, which can often be more difficult than the technical details of the system being designed.

Secondly, can a foreign model be successfully imported? Yes, I think so, but only if you are prepared (indeed eager) for it to be appropriately customised to the local context. Do not get attached to the details of any particular model you bring with you. Internationally, the various approaches to national quality assurance frameworks are converging.


What matters is the heart of evaluation, which consists of

  • purposes, principles and concepts of self-evaluation;
  • analysis (of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), not just description;
  • supporting relevant and valid data;
  • peer review by credible, accepted and trained experts;
  • and conclusions which are supportive and developmental, rather than bureaucratic, punitive or merely critical.

Whether the reports of a national quality assurance body should be published, and whether the results should be linked to funding, are important but secondary issues. In my view, the results should be published, but there should probably not be grading as this is always crude and weakens the subtleties of prose conclusions. There should preferably be no direct funding link.

Customising an imported quality assurance framework can raise major issues, however. How far might this go, before it prejudices the purposes, principles and concepts of quality assurance and evaluation, or before it answers only short-term problems? There is a difficult balance to be found between encouraging necessary harmonisation to the local context, and removing the stimulus to further thinking and development from the 'cognitive dissonance' presented by the differences of perspective in the foreign model. The development of institutions of higher education to become responsive and responsible bodies with some degree of self-regulation, is the important objective, in my view, and it requires emphasis on and commitment to effective internal quality assurance systems and their support."




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