3.3 Stakeholder involvement – staff and students

In communicating Quality Assurance strategies towards teaching staff and the wider HEI community, it is important to emphasize that it’s not a form of bureaucracy or interference from central management with academic autonomy. Rather than regulating staff, it should encourage staff to be fully engaged with their education, reflect on it on their own, with colleagues and with students and strive for the highest possible quality and continuous improvement. At the same time, educational management should not be overly bureaucratic and top-down and there needs to be full recognition of teachers as professionals and experts in their field who need to be given the autonomy for their teaching, encouraged to be innovative and made responsible for their own improvements. This also includes sufficient training and support.   The role of the Quality Manager/QA unit may need to change from the main actors in charge of quality assurance and control to that of facilitators of teaching staff and others directly involved in the teaching and learning  processes, including programme directors (e.g. for broader curricula reforms) and students and their representatives   .

Reading:

See how to effectively build student engament.

Student Engagement Framework (20 min reading)

Excercise:

Identify ways to make improvement visible within HEIs. Use your notepad. (30 minutes work)