Diane Grayson

2nd Period of Quality Assurance:Quality Enhancement in HE

International

Ubiquitous, powerful ICT

Ready access to enormous amounts of information

Globalisation

Sustainability concerns

Workplace mobility and career changes

Recent

Global economic recessionHigh unemployment, especially among youth

21st Century context

Social and political upheaval

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National

Lingering inequities

Serial curriculum changes at school level

Limited knowledge and skills of school-leavers

Stringent labour laws

Compliance rather capacity developmentJob-hopping rather than working your way up

Total population in five-year age groups and sex (Census 2011, Statistics SA)

Throughput rates for 2005 cohort in 3-year degree programmes excluding UNISA (CHE VitalStats)

Throughput rates for 2005 cohort in 4-year degree programmes excluding UNISA (CHE VitalStats)

“Higher education is the major driver of the information/knowledge system, linking it with economic development. However, higher education is much more than a simple instrument of economic development. Education is important for good citizenship and enriching and diversifying life...

Massive investments in the higher education system have not produced better outcomes in the level of academic performance or graduation rates. While enrolment and attainment gaps have narrowed across different race groups, the quality of education for the vast majority has remained poor at all levels. The higher education therefore tends to be a low-participation, high-attrition system.”

[National Planning Commission 2012]

The need

But we have enormous systemic problems

Selection

Placement

Retention

Progression

Graduation

  

  

  

  

We need HEIs to utilise collective wisdom, expertise and experience to

Institutions adapt, adopt, apply solutions appropriate for their own context

We have to work together as HEIs

1. share good practices that enable

2. identify obstacles to 3. design solutions to

problems that prevent

STUDENT SUCCESS}

“…the long-term ‘college success’ question encompasses not only whether students have earned a degree, but also whether graduates are in fact achieving the level of preparation– in terms of knowledge, capabilities and personal qualities– that will enable them to both thrive and contribute in a fast-changing economy and in turbulent, highly demanding global, societal and often personal contexts.”

Carol Geary Schneider (in Kuh, G.D. (2008). High-Impact Educational Practices. Washington D.C: Association of American Colleges and Universities)

Student success

• Engagement in individual institutions around ensuring quality in 3 core functions of teaching and learning, research and community engagement

• Aimed to bring all HEIs to acceptable level of quality

• All public and 11 private institutions audited

• 7 institutional audits due to be closed in 2013, remaining 2 in 2014

First cycle– Institutional audits

UK QAA-- Quality Assurance:

 “the means through which an institution ensures and confirms that the conditions are in place for students to achieve the standards set by it or by another awarding body” (QAA 2004),

Quality Enhancement:

 “the process of taking deliberate steps at institutional level to improve the quality of learning opportunities....” (QAA 2006).

Scottish QAA

“has defined enhancement as taking deliberate steps to bring about improvement in the effectiveness of the learning experiences of students.”

Second cycle– Quality enhancement

• Teaching has no value if it does not lead to learning

• Universities don’t have to do what they always did (lecturers standing in front of large groups of students, presenting information)

• Accessing information isn’t a problem nowadays. We need to teach information processing skills--which information to access and what to do with it.

• Harness technology to create flexible learning opportunities

• Less well-resourced institutions can leapfrog into the 21st century

Reconceptualising teaching FOR learning in the 21st century

The enhancement of student learning with a view to producing an increased number of graduates with attributes that are personally, professionally and socially valuable.

1. enhanced student learning, leading to an

2. increased number of graduates that have

3. improved graduate attributes

STUDENT SUCCESS

Our focus will be…

• Teaching

• Curriculum

• Assessment

• Learning resources

• Student enrolment management

• Academic student support and development

• Non-academic student support and development

Factors that affect student success (from 1st cycle)

TEACHING

Pedagogy

Philosophy

Logistics

Teacher characteristic

s

Workload Course

allocation

Promotion

Professional development

CURRICULUM

Assumed prior knowledge and

skills

Coherence

ProgressionTime

Updating and renewal

Overall load

Prerequisites

Progression

Level and

standard

ASSESSMENTCognitive demand

Relationship with

objectives

Format

Purpose

Moderation

Marking

Timing Feedback

Variety

LEARNING RESOURCES

Lecture theatres

Student learning spaces

Labs

Equipment ICT

Library

On-line learning

environment

STUDENT ENROLMENT

MANAGEMENT

Selection Placement

Exclusions

Admissions

Pass rates

Completion rates

ACADEMIC SUPPORT AND DEVELOPMENT

Alternative programmes Extra support

Curriculum advising

Academic performance monitoring

Career guidance

Mentoring

NON-ACADEMIC SUPPORT AND DEVELOPMENT

Physical and mental health

Clubs and sports

Leadership

Finances Food, transport,

accommodation

Community service

1st cycle

Criteria specified from the beginning

Institutions engaged sequentially

One process used throughout (self-evaluation, visit, report, improvement plan, progress report)

2nd cycle

More inductive- themes will emerge during the process

Institutions engaged simultaneously

Different processes will be used at different stages

Iterative

Approach

Institutional submissions

Analysis

Feedback

Collaboration

Analysis

Symposia, working groups

Projects of other bodies

Institutional capacity

development

Research projects

Possible sub-groupings around areas of activity

Future graduate

Physical, resource and technical

provision

Curriculum, teaching and assessment

Student support

Student life

Academic planning and administration

INSTITUTIONAL CULTURE

2013• Meet with DVCs for Teaching and Learning• Hold national and regional gatherings for

advocacy and awareness-raising• Pilot2014• Receive institutional submissions and analyse

them• Publish key issues, good practice, challenges2015• Facilitate meetings of groups of institutions• Analyse and synthesise group reports• Facilitate spin-off activities, e.g. workshops,

working groups, symposia, research projects• Publish useful findings thusfar

Time frames

“Across the Scottish higher education sector, the most prominent outcome of the work of the G21C Theme is a robust and well-articulated collaborative grasp - or understanding - of the attributes and qualities which are needed by the twenty-first century graduate.

That grasp is collaborative in a vitally important sense, because it represents a shared understanding across the Scottish sector that has emerged by institutions learning from and with one another - but it has not been constructed in a form that overrides or submerges each HEI’s institutional identity. On the contrary, and integral to the goals of enhancement, each HEI has been encouraged to develop a vision of graduate attributes for the twenty-first century that best reflects its own distinctive mission, ethos and strategic priorities. Those institutional visions are therefore also a key outcome of the G21C Theme….

The second principal outcome of the G21C Theme is perhaps less visible, but deserves full recognition. It takes the form of the robust toolbox of strategies that Scotland's HEIs have developed throughout G21C, individually and collaboratively, to advance and embed within institutional practice their enhancement of the student learning experience.”

EXAMPLE: Scottish QAA Enhancement:Graduates for the 21st century theme

• an environment characterised by collegiality and willingness to collaborate among institutions, and with institutions and other role-players in higher education, on improving student success;

• development and implementation of policy;

• structures or groupings of people or institutions for addressing obstacles to student success in a systematic, measured and monitored way;

• resources that can be shared among HEIs and their students;

• additional resources that are made available in certain areas of activity to develop sustainable, long-term capacity at less well-resourced institutions;

• development and use of tools and indicators for better monitoring of improvements in student success

• codes of good practice for promoting student success.

Anticipated outcomes

• Enhancement of the quality of undergraduate provision

• Enhancement of the quality of graduates

• A higher education system that is improving continuously as members of the higher education community collaborate to share good practice and solve shared problems.

Broad desired outcomes