Maintaining Quality within Institutions

This subject has the following teaching availabilities in 2015:

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.

170 hours.

You must have taken the following subject prior to enrolling or you must take the subject concurrently.

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 Disability Liaison website: http://www.services.unimelb.edu.au/disability

Maintaining Quality within Institutions focuses on how people undertake, define, measure, monitor and improve quality and quality assurance processes and procedures within tertiary education. Tertiary education institutions are under mounting pressure to demonstrate their quality as a measure of social and financial accountability to students, the public and the government.

This subject will enable students to understand the contexts and approaches of internal quality monitoring, addressing and exploring a range of theoretical, cultural, methodological and practical considerations. It contains four modules of study:

• Module 1: Introduction to quality assurance: Context, theory and approach

This module introduces the context, theory and approaches of internal quality monitoring taking into account the social, political economic and technological changes that are driving the quality agenda in higher education institution.

• Module 2: The Quality Cycle: Planning and Acting

This module explores how institutions can plan quality strategies and operations. It introduces the concepts of planning pyramid and quality cycle and how these can be adapted to their institutional context.

• Module 3: The Quality Cycle: Evaluating and Improving

This module considers the forms of evaluation, review and monitoring and concludes with a discussion of options for managing quality improvement.

• Module 4: External environment: Opportunities and challenges

In synch with the quality cycle, the final module links back to the start of the cycle—understanding and analysing the external positioning of internal quality assurance. This module provides an understanding of the external quality assurance audit process, and looks at opportunities for benchmarking against other institutions and standards. It also discusses some of the issues and challenges relating to quality assurance faced by institutions.

Upon completion of this subject, students should be able to:

• discuss theoretical concepts of quality and quality assurance;
• discuss the social, political, economic and technological changes that are driving the quality agenda in tertiary education;
• assess, appraise and apply quality assurance concepts and strategies to their everyday work; and
• discuss some of the issues and challenges relating to quality assurance.

Assessment for online delivery

• Active participation in the discussion boards for all four modules (i.e. 1 x 400 word posting as well as 1 x 100 word response to a post by others in each of the four modules, adding up to 500 words per module) (2000 words).
• Compulsory webinar attendance for a minimum of three of the four webinars
• One essay (3000 words) due on the final day of the exam period.

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

Assessment for intensive subject delivery

There are two assessment tasks:

• Four small group discussion and presentation tasks (5 x 500 word equivalent assessment tasks) (= 2000 words) due during residential school.
• A 3000 word final individual essay due at end of semester.

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

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.