quality – Thinking out loud

While it's useful in identifying the need for different types of quality enhancement, the Raban paper has a few holes in clarity and structure. Raban, first defines 5 types of enhancement using three axes reward or investment; reward good practice, or actively seek to promote future changes surface or deep conditions for improvement. improvement or innovat...

While it's useful in identifying the need for different types of quality enhancement, the Raban paper has a few holes in clarity and structure.

Raban, first defines 5 types of enhancement using three axes
<ol>
  <li> reward or investment; <p>reward good practice, or actively seek to promote future changes</p> </li>
  <li> surface or deep conditions for improvement. </li>
  <li> improvement or innovation </li>
</ol>

The 5 types of quality enhancement are
<ol>
  <li> reward/surface/improvement; <p>e.g. a teaching fellowship that rewards past performance. Only contribution to future improvement is as acting as role model for colleagues </p> </li>
  <li> investment/surface/improvement;<p> e.g. a teaching fellowship that tasks the fellow with specific responsibilities for improving L&T.</p>  <p>Staff development and dissemination of good practice fits here.</p></li>
  <li> investment/deep/improvement ; <p> Aiming to address underlying conditions. e.g. improve aspects of infrastructure, equipment and resources</p> <p>e.g. replace one LMS with another, perhaps upgrade an LMS</p></li>
  <li> investment/surface/innovation; <p>Individual educators re-examining the fundamental assumptions of existing practice...transformational change </p> </li>
  <li> investment/deep/innovation. <p> Transformational change to the management, culture and structure of an institution </p><p>Does a change in structure really count as deep? Perhaps could be part of culture change. </li>
</ol>

QW4 and QE5 are identified as "strategically driven innovation".

<h3>The need for change</h3>

Raban (2007)<blockquote>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.</blockquote>

Doing this is made more difficult due to the nature of how external QA processes work.

<h3>Sources</h3>

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

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Raban (2007)most universities’ quality management systems employ annual monitoring and periodic review procedures that are retrospective and provision focused. These systems are weakly integrated with an institution’s decisions on resource allocation and longer term strategic planning.....The CNAA-derived systems employed by most universities were designed for the...

Raban (2007)<blockquote>most universities’ quality management systems employ annual monitoring and periodic review procedures that are retrospective and provision focused. These systems are weakly integrated with an institution’s decisions on resource allocation and longer term strategic planning.....The CNAA-derived systems employed by most universities were designed for the purpose of securing accountability of (and within) institutions that were, at that time, working in more stable environments.1 Today, when the agility of institutions is at a premium, they seem unhelpfully dirigiste and burdensome.
<p>The second respect in which conventional systems are ‘self-defeating’ is their tendency to promote an ‘unintelligent accountability’ (O’Neill, 2002). Institutions respond to external requirements by strengthening their arrangements for internal accountability; managerial approaches to accountability, based on a lack of trust, undermine the professional commitment and motivation of academic staff; resources and effort are diverted from the core activities of teaching and research; and thus the effort to assure quality impedes its enhancement.</p><p>Many commentators take it as axiomatic that there is, at best, a tension between enhancement and innovation on the one hand, and accountability-driven quality assurance on the other. Their work builds a stack of imposing dichotomies which contrast managerialism with collegial participation, conservation with change, risk- aversion with risk-taking, compliance with self-determination, and retrospective with prospective approaches to quality management (Biggs, 2002; Jackson, 2002; Newton, 2002; Matthias, 2003; Wright, 2003). Whilst an enhancement-led approach does not abandon the accountability and public information requirements of audit, it does suggest that the two can work in harness.</p></blockquote>

<h3>Quality as quality enhancement</h3>

"learning our lesson"<blockquote>Some scholars define quality in higher education as the process of quality enhancement. Hau (1996) argues that quality in higher education and quality teaching in particular, springs from a never-ending process of reduction and elimination of defects. Argyris and SChon (1974) believe that quality is driven by the inquest: "Are we doing things right?" and by the complementary "Are we doing the right things?"</blockquote>

<h3>Identify target first</h3>

"learning our lesson" identifies that "the notion of quality remains vague and unshared internally" and suggests it important to identify the important outcomes first.

<h3>Measuring</h3>

"learning our lesson"<blockquote>...institutions need to develop innovative approaches to measuring the impact of their support on quality teaching. They are still struggling to understand the causal link between their engagement in teaching and the quality of learning outcomes. Exploring the correlation among inputs, processes and outcomes of higher education calls for pioneering and in-depth evaluation instruments</blockquote>

Begging the question, why focus just on instruments (suggesting surveys) and move beyond that to alternate means.

<h3>Role of bottom up approaches</h3>

"learning our lesson"<blockquote>Enouraging bottom-up initiatives from the faculty members, setting them in a propitious learning and teaching environment, providing effective support and stimulating reflection on the role of teaching in the learning process all contribute to quality teaching</blockquote>

<h3>Source</h3>

<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=mi7WAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&ots=ouJUSq3gfK&sig=Ru_9fhmtXA1Dsu7d_kZJFmoRcB0#v=onepage&q&f=false">Learning our lesson: review of quality teaching in higher education</a>

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

<h3>To read references</h3>

<a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com.ezproxy.usq.edu.au/doi/full/10.1108/09684880710723007">Managing quality improvement of eLearning in a large, campus‐based university</a>

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