Higher Education

Andrea Luxton

http://education.gc.adventist.org/documents/Quality Mgmt.pdf

Academic Quality Improvement

Faculty

Academic quality improvement starts with the individual faculty member. Most instinctively reflect on their teaching processes and the effectiveness of their classes. However, it is important to ensure that faculty do receive useful feedback on their teaching and general performance and are given opportunity to set goals for the future. Official student evaluations of courses are one way that this feedback comes to teachers. Such evaluation processes should be as objective as possible to give the most helpful response to teachers. This will ideally mean:

• That forms are anonymous, and where classes are small that written comments are typed up by a reliable third party, so students will feel they can be honest.

• That the same class is evaluated over a period of two or three years, so that the teacher can get a pattern of responses.

In some institutions the form given to students is the same for every class. In others the central core of questions are the same and reflect the issues of focus of the institution to all teaching and learning. However, teachers can add additional questions that ask for responses to their specific concerns in a class. It is also helpful to faculty to have some formal and structured way to reflect on their teaching, along with other aspects of their employment (such as research/professional development and service involvement). A performance by objectives type of annual report is one good way of achieving this. These reports ask faculty to identify and reflect on the areas of greatest satisfaction and concern in the last year in, for example, teaching, research and service; what their goals are in the next year and in what ways they may need help in achieving their goals (see the sample report in Appendix B). Such a report encourages faculty to be self-reflective and consider ways they want to develop themselves. These forms may be best used as the basis for annual appraisal interviews. Most of the quality processes affecting faculty will not be public, although there will be some open department processes that will provide faculty with helpful feedback, and give them opportunity to openly reflect on their performance and ways of further enhancing it. It is also important to remember that while the major focus in quality management is student satisfaction and success, it is also concerned with faculty and staff satisfaction.

These processes should help in those areas, as the concern is not solely with whether an individual is performing adequately. There is also interest in the development of each employee.

Department/Division/School A variety of possibilities of ensuring quality at the department, division and school level exist. Those that are selected will to some degree depend on the current educational environment in the country, and also the size of the institution. The comments below will be directed specifically at departments, but in some settings, these ideas may be applicable at school or division levels.

Cross-marking: In some academic environments cross-marking (or double marking) is an expected part of quality management in higher education. Cross-marking means that for a selected number of major assignments and examinations, at least two faculty grade the work or examination. This assists in ensuring fairness of grading and equitable standards as well as assisting in quality management. In some countries an external marker or examiner will also grade a certain number of papers and examinations, in addition to two internal markers. The external process encourages equitable standards, not just within the institution, but also between institutions in a country.

Department Approval of Syllabi and Examinations: Some departments choose (or are expected) to discuss together all course syllabi before a course is taught, and all examination papers students are expected to take.

Ideally such discussions ensure that courses are taught at a similar level and that there is good understanding within a department of what is happening in other classes. This helps teachers integrate content and skills between courses. It also helps departments check that their overall learning outcomes (see below) are likely to be met and that assessment loads are fairly distributed.

Department Approval and Discussion of all Final Student Grades: Such discussions help a department evaluate the average level of performance of its students, where individual classes appear to be too difficult or too easy for students, and where individual students are performing badly. In this way departments and individual faculty can respond quickly to perceived areas of concern.

Agreeing on Department Aims and Outcomes: All departments should develop their own learning aims and outcomes. These will usually be based on institutional objectives and outcomes, but will be more focused to the particular discipline and program. Where there is more than one program in a department, aims and outcomes should be agreed for each. The department should also agree how to measure their success in helping students achieve the learning outcomes. Certain outcomes may be evaluated through individual course examinations; some through core testing (such as in the area of technology use); some by student questionnaires that ask for feedback on key areas of the program and others by practicum experiences.

Developing Standards for Levels of a Program: Some departments and programs may want to not just delineate desired outcomes for total programs, but desired outcomes for different levels of the program. This will be especially valuable in countries where the progression of a degree program is largely fixed. Some institutions will also expect application by students to move from one level of a program to another. This will provide points throughout a degree for formal consultation and refocusing between faculty and students.

Profiling Grade Expectations: In some environments, profiling grades very simply means identifying “A” as excellent, “B” as good, etc. However, others develop a more sophisticated analysis, such as “A”, a high level of conceptual understanding; excellent knowledge of facts; strong written and oral skills in communicating information, etc. Such a profile (which may vary for different levels of a program) assists students in knowing department expectations, and faculty in knowing how to grade, especially with longer, non-objective forms of assignment. These grades and descriptions are often also tied to fixed percentage points.

Exit Interviews: It is usually when a student finishes a program that an institution will get the most useful and honest feedback. This is often best achieved through a department interview or questionnaire. Interviews should explore general student satisfaction, but focus particularly on the desired outcomes of the department.

Alumni Surveys: : It is often after students have left an institution for a couple of years that they have the most complete picture of what their education has done for them. Focused surveys of graduates at selected intervals are therefore a very useful way for a department to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their program in the marketplace beyond the institution.

The ideas above are in no way exhaustive. However, the questions that do need to be asked by each department are: “How can we be sure that the quality of what we are giving students is the best we can do? What processes can we implement to ensure that we are managing the quality and receiving enough accurate feedback to evaluate how we can improve?” The responses can then be contextualized. Whatever processes are in place, there should always be a formal procedure when each department reviews its desired outcomes, its processes and its effectiveness in reaching its outcomes.

Based on the review, plans for improvement and change can be made, from changes in the core content of a program to the way student comments will be collected. Other recommendations will be more far reaching and impact on funding of the department, for example. These will need to be passed on to the administrative group who can deal with that particular issue.

One important area remains: the responsibility of the department in considering faculty quality and satisfaction. As identified in the section on faculty above, much of the question of quality improvement when it comes to faculty will operate within a different structure. However, there remain some areas that departments should consider. For example, what if the feedback in a particular year suggests that the department is lacking in skills to deliver the curriculum using technology? Or that teaching skills are weak in some areas? Or that although teaching is strong, some faculties do not seem to be up to date in their area of teaching/research? Then the department has the responsibility to discuss how these areas of need can best be met. It may mean sending recommendations to another campus committee; it may mean agreeing to prioritize department funds to develop faculty in particular ways.

Overall, a quality improvement approach in higher education operates against the traditional view of a teacher having sole control of what happens in his or her classroom. This is a difficult transition for some faculty to make in their thinking. However, the concept that the department as a whole has responsibility for ensuring the delivery of a quality program is an important principle in higher education that is becoming a universal international position. This does not mean that the individual teacher should not have any personal autonomy or rights. It does mean that these must always be balanced against the expectations of students and institutions that all faculties will work in a united way to deliver education of quality.