Maintaining Quality within Institutions

This subject has the following teaching availabilities in 2012:

Participation in weekly discussion boards and webinars, online exams and surveys and final exam.
These subjects are offered online only and do not require attendance on campus.

120 hours.

You must have taken the following subjects prior to enrolling in this subject

None

None

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For the purposes of considering request for Reasonable Adjustments under the Disability Standards for Education (Cwth 2005), and Students Experiencing Academic Disadvantage Policy, academic requirements for this subject are articulated in the Subject Description, Subject Objectives, Generic Skills and Assessment Requirements of this entry.

The University is dedicated to provide support to those with special requirements. Further details on the disability support scheme can be found at the HDisability Liaison Unit websiteH: Hhttp://www.services.unimelb.edu.au/disability/H

Maintaining Quality within Institutions focuses on how people can undertake define, measure, monitor and improve quality and quality assurance processes and procedures. The first unit of the subject provides an introduction to the contexts and approaches of internal quality monitoring, addressing at a range of cultural, methodological and practical considerations. The second unit explores how institutions can plan quality strategies and operations, and different methods for assessing and evaluating quality.
Forms of evaluation, review and monitoring are considered in the third unit, which concludes with a discussion of options for managing quality improvement. In synch with the quality cycle, the final unit links back to the start of the cycle –understanding and analysing the external positioning of internal QA. This unit takes stock of what has been achieved, and looks at opportunities for benchmarking against other institutions and standards.

To enable participants to describe the major factors that affect institutional quality assurance; to describe the notion of a planning pyramid with long-term vision, medium-term strategic plans and shorter- term operational plan; to discuss how improvement can be made through evaluation in terms of review and monitoring within the institution; to identify the difference between information comparison and benchmarking including choosing institutions or sub-areas for information comparison and for benchmarking; and to describe the external quality agency audit process.

• Active participation in weekly discussion board and virtual teams (6 x 250 word postings);
• Compulsory webinar attendance;
• One essay (2500 words) due after the end of the semester.

This is a pass/fail subject. Participants receive feedback for each task, and must pass all tasks.

There are two hurdle requirements:

• weekly discussion board postings
• webinar attendance

Selected readings and notes to be provided prior to commencement

This subject is not available as a breadth subject.

On successful completion of this subject participants will appreciate the challenges of meeting internal and external QA priorities, and be able to apply this knowledge to specific situations.