The first barrier to students engaging in quality: understanding.

Making sure that Higher Education Providers (universities, colleges that deliver degrees etc) adhere to nationally agreed standards and provide learning of a suitable quality is a tricky business. The systems that make up ‘quality assurance’ create a fairly complex framework of procedures and policies that providers have to have in place, which all have to be checked during reviews by teams of external folk.

These processes can come across as dry, bureaucratic and tedious to some but they are vital in ensuring good quality degrees and maintaining the UK’s reputation for excellent higher education – and importantly they impact upon what students experience on the ground.

Much progress is being made in getting students more involved in quality processes; with many providers now involving students on the panels that check departments are up to scratch and all teams that review whole universities now include one student from another university.

One of the current debates goes much deeper and much closer to home though, it is around quality assurance (and enhancement) at a course level – the tangible level that students see, feel and experience all the time – and how we get students more involved in reviewing and developing their course.

Traditionally (well, in the last few years) the majority of student engagement in low level quality has been through course reps and end of module evaluation surveys but the effectiveness of these methods is hugely varied and, it is argued, these are not enough to turn talk of ‘students as partners’ from rhetoric into reality.

External examiners. Annual monitoring. Programme validation. Programme revalidation. They are just 4 of the many ways quality assurance happens which students could engage in but they probably mean nothing to average ‘Joe Bloggs’ student – and quite understandably given that many staff don’t like engaging with them, never mind students.

There is of course the question of whether students need to be involved in all of these or just some? This leads me on to my favourite of the many debates taking place within student engagement / quality circles:

If we want students to be able to feed into the development of their course and if we want to hear their voice effectively when we are monitoring a course’s quality: what is it that students need to know and understand before they can effectively engage in quality assurance and quality enhancement?

Your opinions are very much welcomed as comments below and will help to inform my contributions to national policy development. You could also email me: dan.derricott@nus.org.uk

Paradigm shifts in HE quality assurance: from soft to hard power

It’s difficult to be involved in the Higher Education sector and not notice that things are changing at a significant pace and with much vigour; quality assurance is no exception. With changing review methods, judgements on additional criteria and the white paper indicating a move towards ‘risk-based’ quality assurance amongst other things, institutions of all kinds have a lot to keep up with.

At the European Quality Assurance Forum in Antwerp, it was helpful for the opening session to set some context and provide conceptual frameworks to help make sense of the broader shifts in approach. Prof. Mala Singh of the Open University gave the opening keynote and talked of the paradigms and the shift between them:

Quality assurance ‘soft power’ is a term with origins in the field of political sciences and international relations, it refers to a system not based on political or economic demands but on built on values (for example, those values which underpin the European Standards & Guidelines). Such a system has a clear recognition of institutional autonomy and responsibility.

On the other hand quality assurance ‘hard power’ moves away from the ‘at arm’s length’ feel of soft power, it has a greater focus on government control and regulation where quality assurance is in itself a tool for regulating the sector. The focus tends to be on an outcomes regime, providing information for ‘consumers’ and easily interpretable quantitative information.

(Does the latter sound familiar at all before I continue?)

Professor Singh went on to illustrate the UK context to European colleagues, showing the journey from self-regulation by Vice-Chancellors’ associations to a Quality Assurance Agency being established at arm’s length through to the QAA becoming, in effect, a state regulator. The white paper adds its own twist in that the forthcoming regulatory regime could be a risk-based; it could see the end of regular cyclical reviews as we know them and it introduce risk profiles for each institution – all in the name of protecting the risk to students in a cost-effective way.

Similarly in Australia, there is a move towards standards frameworks, language of compliance and sanctions for non-compliance. Ultimately it was demonstrated that there is a paradigm shift from soft power to hard power.

Now I’m sure this comes as no surprise, what it does do however is provide straightforward concepts for a basic understanding of what is happening in HE quality assurance which I think are helpful for those who are contributing to discussions on the development of quality and the sector more broadly.

Something worthy of consideration (and it is receiving just that from many concerned folk in HE) is the sustainability of ‘quality enhancement’ in the future – particularly as political and economic pressures force a focus on assurance and minimising risk for students on what will probably become a shoestring budget. Much of the student movement’s work on engaging students in quality looks at enhancement and the current approach allows for that, but what will come of such work if competing demands take precedence?

Your thoughts are of course welcome.

Avoiding 576 hours of predictability at University

Key Information Sets, more accessible QAA reports, well-defined and pre-determined learning outcomes, league tables. They all provide a sense of security and predictability about higher education courses in the UK as prospective students and parents demand more and clearer information on the return for their investment.

This is driving our institutions into overdrive, especially as they prepare for the launch of the KIS, with a focus on optimising statutory returns, offering perks to add value and suddenly much more keen to spot student concerns early on before they get anywhere near the National Student Survey in the final year. I can almost see the 24 hour complaints hot-line going direct to a phone next to the Registrar’s bed at all hours of the night as the letter ‘r’ on the computer keyboard in the library is getting a little too sticky to comply with the excellent service standards upon which the institution prides itself.

Pedantic? Yes. Exaggerated? Perhaps. Acceptable? Certainly not.

That great sense of risk, uncertainty, exploration, the unknown – is there a place for such excitement and uncertainty in post-2012 higher education? I hope so, but I fear not.

I was lucky enough to attend the 6^th European Quality Assurance Forum in Antwerp, Belgium, this month and thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself in intellectual debate on trust in higher education with HE folk such as Chief Execs of Quality Assurance Agencies and Vice-Chancellors from across the continent. All very swish, yes, but it seriously got me thinking about the bigger picture and how what we’re trying to achieve at Lincoln goes against the grain, swims against the tide etc.

Today I heard about how student volunteers on an open day had been told by staff not to refer to ‘Student as Producer’ as it gives the wrong impression to parents, I guess they mean it looks like you’re getting less for your money. It quietly crushed me inside given all that we have invested in promoting the project recently.

Yes, we absolutely must ensure that students who invest time, effort and emotion into their university study are rewarded with a second-to-none experience of learning and personal development, but that should be a framework or a safety net – not a situation where you can predict the happenings in each of the (approx) 576 hours of lectures and seminars over three years and measure the ‘return on investment’. You don’t buy a degree. You can’t market initiatives like Student as Producer less when in fact they aim to make the learning experience much richer and much more rewarding for students.

The last couple of weeks have taken me on a bit of a thought-journey, it has quite simply left me more determined to work towards an interesting, inspiring and imaginative higher education for those who follow me.

‘Student unions should play a starring role in student engagement’s new fame’ – by #qualitygeek @wheelybarrow

There are many people having their say in the student movement on this and that, with a whole bunch of special groups and campaigns for certain segments of the student population. I proudly self-define as a #qualitygeek.

#qualitygeeks could be best defined as a higher education folk who are interested in student engagement in quality assurance & enhancement. They are active on Twitter in boldly defending the reputation and honour of fellow #qualitygeeks. There is even talk of a hostile takeover of the National Union of Students and rebranding as the ‘National Union of Quality Geeks’ or #nuqg in 140-character dominated environments.

One of my favourite #qualitygeeks, Matthew Barrow / @wheelybarrow has been blogging away on the Guardian’s Higher Education Network – and I think it’s well worht a read… http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2011/oct/31/student-engagement-through-student-unions

Delighted to return to the QAA Student Sounding Board

Good news! After really enjoying being a member of QAA‘s Student Sounding Board last year, my application to remain a member for a second year has been successful.

The Student Sounding Board advises QAA’s staff, Chief Executive and Board of Directors on the student perspective in quality policy discussions and helps to shape policy and process in a way that puts students firmly at the heart.

On another – but related – note, I’ve been quoted in a QAA press release announcing a major investment in supporting student engagement in quality which is great! (albeit I don’t hold the post detailed)… http://www.qaa.ac.uk/Newsroom/PressReleases/Pages/quality-matters-2011.aspx

I’m an engaged European student now

Of course I have always been a student in / from Europe and have tended to be ‘engaged’ but admittedly I have never referred to myself as a European student. That is all changing though as I embark upon the latest and one of the most exciting pieces of work in the Higher Education sector.

Following a successful nomination from the National Union of Students UK to the European Students’ Union (ESU), I am a member of the ESU’s Expert Pool on Quality Assurance and as tends to happen, that opened another door.

Those who follow me attentively on Twitter and my Facebook friends will know that I recently travelled to Istanbul in Turkey for a few days. That was because through the ESU I was selected to be a member of the European University Association’s (EUA) Institutional Evaluation Programme (IEP).

The EUA is an organisation that brings together universities from across Europe for numerous reasons, but specifically one of the things they offer to members is access to the IEP.

IEP is described as being ‘designed to ensure that higher education institutions gain maximum benefit from a comprehensive evaluation conducted by a team of experienced European higher education leaders. The intention is for these evaluations to support the participating institutions in the continuing development of their strategic management and internal quality culture.’

You could compare it to a QAA Institutional Review in the UK and my impression is that it is most useful in those countries without such well developed national frameworks and regulation for quality assurance – hence a low take up in the UK. I imagine a QAA review is quite enough for most Heads of Quality to contend with.

The teams that conduct evaluations are made up mostly of current or former Rectors / Vice-Chancellors from a plethora of countries, as well as a student member with experience of institutional, national or international quality, and the teams are coordinated by somebody with appropriate experience, i.e. a former Head of Quality.

Istanbul was the annual gathering of evaluators and a chance to learn that I’m of to the Czech Republic in March for my first evaluation, which I am really looking forward to it – I think it will be a tremendous learning experience as well an opportunity to share my own experience and perspective.

As part of a wider effort to embrace, understand and appreciate the European context of HE quality – the Student as Producer project is supporting me to attend a conference in November (for which I’m especially grateful).

I’m both discovering and applying, which is the approach I’m most suited to when it comes to learning. It’s all very exciting.