Quality assurance at University

The University Communications Office issues a number of publications giving useful information on the University. The following is what a recent publication reported on quality assurance at the University.

"To succeed in its mission for quality education, the University has adopted an approach characterised by a self-critical attitude towards its procedures. External evaluation compliments internal procedures. The University aims to refine a mechanism of quality that represents a transparent system of accountability.

"The Statute stipulates that the University will establish and regularly review policies on academic standards. The Statute further provides for the setting up of a Quality Assurance Committee (QAC) and an Academic Audit Unit (AAU) to ensure the implementation of these policies and to meet the desired quality standards. In 1995 the University Council set up the QAC, and the AAU within it, directly responsible to the Rector and the Council of the University.

"The QAC's remit is to enhance the University's strengths and to further the interests of the institution, its staff and its students by providing the appropriate support. The University Council has stressed that quality assurance is regarded as the collective responsibility of the University community.

"The review of academic programmes forms a central aspect of quality assurance to ascertain that expectations are being met and standards are being reached. For this purpose, the University relies on feedback from external examiners and from students' study-unit feedback forms.

"The role of external examiners is evidently of utmost importance in that they have the delicate task of providing feedback on the standards prevailing and that these are comparable in standard to those of reputable universities outside the country. Essentially, the role of external examiners is to evaluate whether students are being provided with the expected quality education and a fair assessment of their academic achievement.

"Feedback forms serve to seek students' reactions to the study-unit being taught in order to increase the lecturers' awareness of the effectiveness of their teaching. The latter would then be in a better position to take appropriate action to adjust their teaching. Moreover, through the feedback forms the University provides students with another opportunity to participate directly in the institution's inter-communication process.

"Rigorous validation and eventual approval of courses forms an essential feature of the process to ensure quality education. So far the responsibility for the validation of a course has resided in individual Departments and the respective Faculty or Institute Board, and acceptance by Senate. Therefore, the Department and Faculty concerned undertake the detailed scrutiny of every course proposal. However the QAC has initiated the process of a standardised, University-wide validation procedure to facilitate the same standards throughout the institution.

"As a first step towards the development of a system of more rigorous course validation, a Senate sub-committee was set up in 2000 to vet all new course proposals according to certain specific criteria prior to consideration of regulations by Senate."