"The improvement of teaching and learning and the dissemination of good practice are important; and conventional approaches to quality management can provide the intelligence and stimulus for this kind of enhancement. But these approaches are not conducive to more fundamental action on the deeper institutional factors that impact on teaching and learning; nor are they conducive to the promotion of innovative (and risk-taking) practice and the creation of new curricular and organisational structures. For this we require a ‘modernisation’ of our quality assurance systems that would facilitate risk-taking and anticipate its possible consequences."

 

Explanatory Context

There are a wide range of perspectives on the nature of QA and its relationship to QE, here is a summary of the perspectives of four prominent authors in the field.

 

1.Quality assurance and quality enhancement are not the same as the first is concerned with determining that objectives and aims have been achieved, while quality enhancement is concerned with making improvements.

 

According to Middlehurst, quality enhancement is part of a wider framework in which quality control, quality assurance, quality enhancement and transformation are stages in the management of quality. She argues that the common belief that quality assurance leads naturally to quality enhancement is not correct, as most quality assurance efforts are by and large concentrated in accountability; and accountability and enhancement are not necessarily connected and sometimes are even in conflict with each other.

 

Middlehurst, R. (1997), 'Enhancing Quality'. In F. Coffield and B. Williamson (eds), Repositioning Higher Education. Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press.

 

2.Quality assurance may be either ‘retrospective’ or ‘prospective’ depending on the type of quality it is aiming to assure.

 

In Biggs’ view, retrospective quality assurance looks into the past to make a judgement with a focus on accountability. In contrast, prospective quality assurance is concerned with the present and future, focusing on quality as fit for purpose, and encouraging improvement.  Biggs describes three aspects of quality within an institution, amongst which is quality enhancement, defined as the internal mechanisms that an institution puts in place to continually review and improve practice.

 

Biggs, J. (2001), 'The reflective institution: assuring and enhancing the quality of teaching and learning'. Higher Education, 41, 221 – 238

 

3.In general, formal external evaluations have accountability and compliance focuses rather than the encouragement of continuous quality improvement of the student experience. In most institutions where it occurs, improvement of the student experience is a function of internal review and monitoring processes, usually heavily reliant, nowadays, on student feedback, examiners reports, internal improvement audits, periodic revalidation of programmes of study and staff teams critically self-reflecting on their everyday practice.’

 

Harvey argues that all internal processes of quality monitoring have a greater effect on the quality of the provision that students are receiving than the external monitoring processes.

 

Harvey, L. (2005), 'A history and critique of quality evaluation in the UK'. Quality Assurance in Education, 13 (4), 263 – 276.

 

4.Quality assurance is one of three functions or quality processes within higher education, along with benchmarking and quality improvement.

 

According to Inglis, quality is about making comparative judgements and the differences between these three processes revolve around the type of comparison they make:

- quality assurance is the process by which a product or service is compared with a predetermined (minimum) standard, defined internally or externally.

- quality improvement is about an internal comparison between the current standard and the standard being targeted

 

Inglis, A. (2005), 'Quality improvement, quality assurance, and benchmarking: comparing two frameworks for managing quality processes in open and distance learning'. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 6 (1).

 

 

Related Terms and Concepts

Benchmarking

Quality

e-learning 

 

Key Research Reports

Jara, M. (2007) ‘Assuring and Enhancing the Quality of Online Courses: Exploring Internal Mechanisms in Higher Education Institutions in England’. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Institute of Education, University of London

 

ABSTRACT - The expansion and diversification of the higher education system in England in the last 30 years has led to traditional campus-based institutions starting to offer more flexible patterns of delivery amongst which the development of online learning courses has become widespread practice. One aspect that has been particularly affected by these new modes of delivery has been that of institutional processes set up to maintain and enhance the quality of programmes, brought about by the government calling for institutions to be more accountable. Internal mechanisms for quality assurance and enhancement are part of the requirements that higher education institutions have in place as part of their responsibility for the quality of their programmes. The question posed here was whether these internal quality assurance mechanisms are effective for every type of course provided by an institution, and particularly whether they are effective to assure and enhance the quality of online learning courses.

This research aimed to further understand how effective the quality assurance procedures used by dual-mode universities are in ensuring and enhancing the quality of their online courses. The research strategy aimed to identify whether the quality assurance procedures implemented were capturing the aspects that characterise online courses. To allow an examination of the procedures, as well as the features of the courses under study, a case study approach was selected as the most appropriate strategy for this enquiry. The results indicate the features of online courses impacting on the effectiveness of the quality assurance procedures were: the position that these courses had within their institutions; the distributed configuration of teams; and the distant location of students. These were limiting the potential of the mechanisms to assure and enhance quality. In terms of the specific quality assurance procedures studied, the findings suggest that the mechanisms most affected by the online modality were module evaluations, student representatives and team meetings.

 

 

Synthesis of Research Findings

The synthesis should provide a summary of what the research in the area says about the topic. The Observatory synthesis should provide a simple guide for readers as to the key issues and outcomes. It should also acknowledge any dissent or disagreement in an area, and should highlight areas that have been neglected to date.

 

If a synthesis (or syntheses) already exists, use it (them), or point to their web location. The Observatory synthesis can be newly written or draw heavily on existing literature (duly acknowledged and not contravening normal academic quotation under fair use, circa maximum of 10%).

The synthesis will also point to other sections: policy implications, implications for stakeholders, and thus to examples of good practice.

(Guideline: up to 1,000 words; anything longer than this should probably be made available as an attached file for download, and a summary provided instead.)

 

 

Literature Review

 

First Review

See the literature review in Jara, M. (2007) ‘Assuring and Enhancing the Quality of Online Courses: Exploring Internal Mechanisms in Higher Education Institutions in England’. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Institute of Education, University of London

 

Second Review

Paul Bacsich carried out what he describes as a preliminary review of the literature on benchmarking - Bacsich, P. (2005) Theory of Benchmarking for e-Learning: A Top-Level Literature Review. 

 

Policy Implications

This section should identify any policy implications (institutional, national, international) that are associated with the entry. Sometimes these policy implications will be fairly easy to identify. In other cases it will not be so easy to specify the policy implications. For some entries there may be no policy implications. Again draw on any existing documentation that addresses the policy issues. This is an area where community input would expand the discussion. (Guideline: up to 500 words.)

 

Note: it may be appropriate here, and in the sections that follow, to include direct links to briefing documents produced by project teams.

 

Implications for Stakeholder Groups

This section should identify implications for any of the various stakeholder groups. Again draw on any existing documentation that addresses implications for practice. This is an area that would be heavily dependent on community input to develop the entry. (Guideline: up to 500 words.)

 

Practical Applications

This section should provide examples of practical activity. It needs practical case studies of what people have done with commentary on what worked and what didn’t. Again, this section should provide links rather than containing volumes of new material itself. (Guideline: up to 500 words.)

 

 

Events

 

Quality Assurance and Quality Enhancement: Relationships and perspectives. A conference organised by HEFCE, the Higher Education Academy and QAA, 11 June 2008, East Midlands Conference Centre, Nottingham. The presentation material from this event is now available at:

http://www-new1.heacademy.ac.uk/events/detail/quality_assurance_quality_enhancement

 

 

 

Bibliography 

Bacsich, P. (2005) Theory of Benchmarking for e-Learning: A Top-Level Literature Review

 

Biggs, J. (2001), 'The reflective institution: assuring and enhancing the quality of teaching and learning'. Higher Education, 41, 221 – 238

 

Daly, C. Pachler, N., Pickering, J. & Bezemer, J. (2006) A study of e-learners’ experiences in the mixed-mode professional degree programme, the Master of Teaching.

 

Ferney, D. (2007) Yogis and Commissars: Learning, Teaching and Quality in the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) Institutional Audit Methodology (2007-11) inspire Occasional Paper No. 3: October 2007 Anglia Ruskin University  

 

Harvey, L. (2005), 'A history and critique of quality evaluation in the UK'. Quality Assurance in Education, 13 (4), 263 – 276.

 

Inglis, A. (2005), 'Quality improvement, quality assurance, and benchmarking: comparing two frameworks for managing quality processes in open and distance learning'. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 6 (1). 

 

Jara, M. (2007) ‘Assuring and Enhancing the Quality of Online Courses: Exploring Internal Mechanisms in Higher Education Institutions in England’. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Institute of Education, University of London

 

Jara, M and Mellar, H. (2007) ‘Assuring and Enhancing the Quality of Online Courses: Exploring Internal Mechanisms in Higher Education’. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning (EURODL). March 2007. Vol 2007/I.

 

Jara, M. and Mohamad, F. (2007) Pedagogical Templates for E-learning. WLE Centre. Occasional Papers in Worked-based Learning 2

 

Middlehurst, R. (1997), 'Enhancing Quality'. In F. Coffield and B. Williamson (eds), Repositioning Higher Education. Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press.

 

QAA (2004) Code of practice for the assurance of academic quality and standards in higher education. Section 2: Collaborative provision and flexible and distributed learning (including e-learning)

 

QAA (2006) Handbook for institutional audit: England and Northern Ireland

 

QAA (2006) Outcomes from institutional audit. Institutions' support for e-learning

 

QAA (2008) Outcomes from institutional audit. Second Series. Learning support resources (including VLEs)

 

Raban, C. (2007) 'Assurance versus enhancement: less is more?' Journal of Further and Higher Education, 31 (1), 77 - 85.

 

Swinglehurst (2008) Peer Observation of Teaching in the Online Environment: an action research approach

 

 

 

Research Sources Database

This section is intended to link to a live database in the final version of the Observatory site. It should contain citation information as well as some description of the content, such as an abstract. However, for the moment, this functionality is still under development. For this purposes of this pilot, it would probably best to ignore this section.

 

Other Relevant Portals or Websites

European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education

 

European Foundation for Quality in eLearning

 

International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education