Section 2 - Quality Assurance in Higher Education: An Overview

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2.1 Introduction and terminology

2.1.1 The University of Aberdeen, as with other institutions of higher education in the UK, must ensure that its educational provision:

operates with appropriate academic standards;
offers students learning opportunities of, at-the-least, acceptable quality.

2.1.2 To ensure that the University meets these requirements, a number of quality assurance procedures operate. Some of these are run by the University itself, whereas others involve external scrutiny. Both internal and external procedures operate according to sector-wide guidance that, in Scotland, is provided by the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council (SHEFC), working on behalf of the Scottish Executive.

2.1.3 The key terms are as follows:

Academic standards¹
Academic standards are a way of describing the level of achievement that a student has to reach to gain an academic award (for example, a degree). It should be at a similar level across the UK.

Academic quality¹
Academic quality is a way of describing how well the learning opportunities available to students help them to achieve their award. It is about making sure that appropriate and effective teaching, support, assessment and learning opportunities are provided for them.

Quality assurance (QA)
Quality assurance refers to a range of review procedures designed to safeguard academic standards and promote learning opportunities for students of acceptable quality.

2.1.4 There are various interpretations of what exactly constitutes acceptable quality: e.g., an institution's provision should be "fit for purpose"; should make effective use of resources; should offer its stakeholders value for money; etc… but it is increasingly agreed that it is important to promote improvement of quality, not just to ensure that quality is maintained. This shifts the emphasis from quality assurance to quality enhancement.

Quality enhancement ² (QE)
Quality enhancement is taking deliberate steps to bring about continual improvement in the effectiveness of the learning experience of students.

2.1.5 The core aspects of the student learning experience are:

The curriculum – its structure, aims, intended learning outcomes and types of assessment;
The promotion and support of effective learning – to include types of teaching and learning; provision of student support services, library and IT facilities; measures to involve students in monitoring and enhancing the institution's educational provision; and relevant training and development activities for staff and students.

2.1.6 See also the "two-minute guide" to quality at the University of Aberdeen. Appendix 2.1, also at http://www.abdn.ac.uk/qe/two-minute.shtml

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2.2 The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) www.qaa.ac.uk

2.2.1 Established in 1997 to replace the Higher Education Quality Council, the QAA is a UK-wide semi-public body that:

safeguards educational standards (e.g., it ensures that students awarded a degree in a particular subject have acquired a suitably comprehensive knowledge of that subject, and its related skills, at an appropriate level of sophistication); and
promotes the continual enhancement of the quality of teaching, learning opportunities, and related student support services.

2.1.2 The QAA is funded by subscriptions from the UK's higher education institutions (HEIs), and by the higher education funding councils, including the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council (SHEFC), for whom it performs contract work. The QAA works closely with the higher education sector's 'stakeholders': the funding councils, universities and colleges, staff, students and employers. The QAA acts variously as a think-tank, a spokesperson, and a watchdog. It is responsible for the management of much of what is called the "academic infrastructure" – the guidelines, resources and procedures that both enable and constrain the activities of the UK's higher education institutions. Key elements of this academic infrastructure are the:

Code of Practice for the Assurance of Academic Quality and Standards in Higher Education ³
Frameworks for higher education qualifications
Programme specifications
Subject benchmark statements

2.2.3 Because higher education in Scotland is separately funded, and has several aspects of policy that are distinctly different to the rest of the UK, the QAA has a separate Scottish Office. This is responsible, in conjunction with SHEFC, for administration of the new procedures for assurance of standards and enhancement of quality: the Quality Enhancement Framework.

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2.3 The Academic Quality Handbook

2.3.1 The Academic Quality Handbook sets out in detail the procedures used by the University of Aberdeen to safeguard academic standards and assure/enhance the quality of the learning opportunities it offers to its students. The various regulations and procedures set out here incorporate best practice guidelines issued by SHEFC and/or the QAA (in particular, the relevant sections of the Code of Practice). The first edition of the Handbook was published in 1997, the second in 2001. In 2005 the University moved to a web-only version of the Handbook to facilitate updates taking account of changes in good practice suggested by the HE sector or the University's own QA/QE procedures.

2.3.2 The Handbook addresses the quality of teaching and learning. It does not cover the quality of research directly, but it does detail procedures that promote the quality of the University's arrangements for the training and supervision of research students.

2.3.3 The Handbook provides the authoritative guide to the University's quality procedures. Readers who require a quick overview of the University's quality set-up, rather than detailed guidance on specific aspects of procedure, may wish to consult the Two-minute guide to quality first (Appendix 2.1).

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2.4 Principles and practices of academic quality review: a quick guide

2.4.1 Depending on their exact focus, academic quality review processes examine some or all of:

the academic standards attached to the curriculum, and associated methods of teaching, learning and assessment;
the quality of methods of teaching, learning and assessment, and the various resources that support students' learning;
the robustness of procedures intended to assure academic standards and promote quality of learning opportunities;
promotion of quality as a process of strategic management.

2.4.2 Typically, review procedures involve:

submission of some kind of self-evaluation document by the unit under review;
scrutiny of this submission by a trained peer-review team;
visit by the review team to meet staff and students;
production of a review report that comments on strengths, suggests areas for improvement, and makes recommendations for further action. Some review reports make (or made) formal summary judgements on specific aspects of performance.

2.4.3 There are two chief types of review: those that focus on individual academic disciplines or teaching units (subject level review) and those that address practice and procedures at the level of the institution as a whole. Subject level review tends to emphasise academic standards and quality [i.e., paragraph 2.4.1, (a) and (b)] whereas institution level review tends to examine the robustness of procedures and the strategic management of quality [i.e., paragraph 2.4.1, (c) and (d)].

2.4.4 As reports are usually made available to the public ⁴ , both types of review are intended to ensure that an institution is held accountable to its stakeholders; notably the funding councils (who wish to ensure that public money is being utilised appropriately), prospective students and their sponsors (who want to be satisfied that they will receive a “quality” educational experience before deciding to apply to, or accept a place at, the institution) and current student students and employers (who seek confirmation that the institution offers high quality programmes at appropriate standards that deliver employable graduates).

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2.5 Institutional reviews

2.5.1 The strategic perspective taken by institutional reviews is built on the following essential questions:

What are you trying to do?
Why are you trying to do it?
How are you doing it?
Why are you doing it that way?
Why do you think that is the best way of doing it?
How do you know it works?
How do you improve it?

2.5.2 This style of approach has remained constant despite successive reforms of Scotland's institutional review procedures.

2.5.3 External review of institutions – entitled "academic audit" – was introduced in 1991. Academic audits established the principle that higher education institutions should take primary responsibility for self-evaluation of their internal quality systems, subject to appropriate external checks.

2.5.4 The University of Aberdeen participated in the pilot Academic Audit visits in 1991, and in a second Academic Quality (Continuation) Audit, run by the QAA, in 1998.

2.5.5 SHEFC introduced the Quality Enhancement Framework in 2003 (see Section 3.6), including new procedures for Enhancement-Led Institutional Review (ELIR). Application of the Quality Enhancement Framework will confirm whether or not academic standards are appropriate, and that the quality of provision is (at least) satisfactory, across Scotland's HE sector, so making a more overt emphasis on quality enhancement (as opposed to quality assurance) desirable. ELIR is designed to strengthen an institution's strategic focus on quality enhancement, with an associated switch in emphasis from the delivery of quality teaching to promotion of quality learning. Specific aspects of an ELIR report comment on: ⁵

the ability of the institution's internal review systems to monitor and maintain quality and standards at the level of the programme or award. This commentary leads to a judgement on the level of confidence which can reasonably be placed in the soundness of the institution's current and likely future management of the quality of its programmes and the academic standards of its awards. The expression of this judgement provides a point of tangency between the ELIR method and other review methods operating in other parts of the UK. The judgement is expressed as one of: broad confidence, limited confidence or no confidence;
the institution's arrangements for ensuring that the information it publishes about the quality of its provision is complete, accurate and fair;
the effectiveness of the institution's approach to promoting an effective learning experience for students;
the combined effect of the institution's policies and practices for ensuring improvement in the quality of teaching and learning;
the effectiveness of the institution's implementation of its strategy for quality enhancement.

2.5.6 The University of Aberdeen first went through ELIR in Spring 2005.

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2.6 Subject reviews

1992-1999: Teaching Quality Assessment (TQA)

2.6.1 Between 1992 and 1999 SHEFC conducted its own reviews of institutions' subject-level provision, known as Teaching Quality Assessments, or TQAs. TQAs used the standard review format summarised in 2.4.2 above. Reports included a formal summary judgement on the quality of teaching, which was rated as either Unsatisfactory, Satisfactory or Excellent. The same three categories were used by the English and Welsh HE Funding Councils. In 1993/4, SHEFC introduced a fourth category of judgement, Highly Satisfactory, that was unique to Scotland.

2.6.2 SHEFC TQAs created an important incentive for disciplines to take quality management seriously. Departments rated as unsatisfactory risked having their funding cut, whereas those rated as excellent were rewarded with bonus funds. Public judgements also raised stakeholder awareness of the variability of teaching quality between different subjects and institutions, contributing to the development of media league tables.

2.6.3 In 1997/8, SHEFC adopted the quality profile grading system previously introduced in England and Wales. The quality profile involved "marks out of 24" as teaching departments were rated between 1 and 4 in six aspects of provision:

curriculum design, content and organisation;
teaching, learning and assessment;
student progression and achievement;
student support and guidance;
learning resources;
quality assurance and enhancement.

2.6.4 Although this promised greater precision of judgement, and appealed to compilers of league tables, the diversity of procedures used to judge the quality of higher education in the UK in a short time created confusion, indicating the need for further reform and rationalisation.

Subject review 2000-2002: QAA subject review

2.6.5 In 2000, following completion of the first cycle of TQAs across Scotland, a new UK-wide system of subject review was introduced, administered by the QAA on behalf of the Funding Councils. The key features of QAA subject review were:

increased use of external reference points to guide provision – chiefly the 'academic infrastructure' consisting of the Code of practice; HE qualifications frameworks ⁶ , subject benchmark statements, and programme specifications (see 2.2.2 above);
the 24-point profile was replaced with qualitative judgements as follows:
- for academic standards: confidence, limitedconfidence or noconfidence;
- for quality of learning opportunities, for the three aspects of 1) teaching and learning, 2) student progression, and 3) learning resources: each rated as commendable (with exemplary features sometimes identified), approved or failing.

2.6.6 By 2002, after ten years of external subject review, SHEFC recognised that Scottish HEIs had put in place robust procedures for assuring the quality and standards of their provision and could be given ownership for the continuation of such procedures without the need for annual, external subject-level reviews. In 2003, SHEFC therefore suspended external subject review as part of the new Quality Enhancement Framework (see 2.5.4 above and Section 3.6). Only five subject reviews were therefore conducted at the University of Aberdeen using the new terms of reference (see Appendix 2.2). From 2003 these institutions were required to conduct their own subject level reviews. At the University of Aberdeen, this involved revision of the Internal Teaching Review (ITR) procedures to raise the profile of ITR and ensure that it was aligned with the new SHEFC guidance (see Section 3.6 and Appendices 3.8 to 3.11). An important consequence of SHEFC's initiative is that Scotland's quality regime is once again significantly different to that of England and Wales (ans significantly less bureaucratic – a move much welcomed by the Sector).

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2.7 Useful information on the Web

Published by the QAA:

About the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education
http://www.qaa.ac.uk/aboutus/
The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education: an introduction
http://www.qaa.ac.uk/aboutqaa/qaaintro/intro.htm
A brief guide to quality assurance in UK higher education
http://www.qaa.ac.uk/public/heguide/guide.htm

The University of Aberdeen's quality website includes:

Glossary of quality terms
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/qe/glossary.shtml
Two-minute guide to quality at the University of Aberdeen
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/qe/two-minute.shtml

Past quality review reports, institution level:

University of Aberdeen, Quality Audit Report (October 1998)
http://www.qaa.ac.uk/revreps/instrev/aberdeen/ contents.htm
University of Aberdeen, Enhancement-Led Institutional Review Report (2005)
To add once published

Past quality review reports, subject level:

SHEFC Teaching Quality Assessment (1992-1998)
http://www.shefc.ac.uk/publications/qa/insts/aber.htm
QAA Subject Review (1999-2002)
http://www.qaa.ac.uk/revreps/reviewreports.htm
UoA Internal Teaching Review (2003 onwards)
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/registry/itr/

1 Source: A brief guide to quality assurance in UK higher education, published by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. See http://www.qaa.ac.uk/public/heguide/guide.htm

2 Source: Handbook for enhancement-led institutional review: Scotland, QAA, April 2003.
See http://www.qaa.ac.uk/reviews/ELIR/handbook/scottish_hbook.pdf

3 www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/codeOfPractice/default.asp

4 Under the new Quality Enhancement Framework, which hands responsibility for subject review back to the HE institutions, it is not obligatory to publish subject review reports publicly. However, institutions are expected to conform both to national guidelines on public information, and to the Freedom of Information Act: see: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/central/publication-scheme/about.shtml.

5 Source: Standard QAA (Scotland) ELIR report preamble.

6 In Scotland, the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework; see http://www.scqf.org.uk/