Audits of overseas partnerships in 2001 were arranged to include links in China, Hong Kong, Greece and Israel. In all, 15 institutions agreed to have their partnership links included and all were visited in the UK. Unfortunately, the political situation in Israel forced a change to our plans; audit visits would have placed unnecessary, additional burdens on institutions already struggling to bring together students and tutors. It was decided, therefore, not to visit the UK institutions' partners in Israel, and to produce summary reports based upon the UK visit only. Reports on partnerships in China, Hong Kong and Greece are being finalised and will be published over the next couple of months. The Israel summary reports, together with an overview report, will be published soon.
In addition to the partnerships considered in Hong Kong, a number of institutions also agreed to help us explore the operation of some distance learning arrangements. An overview report on matters surrounding the management of quality and standards in distance learning will be produced; it will be available before the end of the year. We are very grateful to all the institutions and their partners that participated in the programme of audits of overseas collaborative links and the survey of distance learning arrangements.
In 2002, there will be audits of partnerships between UK institutions and their partners in Denmark, Finland, Germany, Switzerland, Malaysia and Singapore. To identify the institutions that have been asked to participate in these audits we used, as a basis for further enquiries, the information we received about collaborative links earlier this year. This information was very helpful and provided us with a fuller understanding of the current range and scope of UK activity overseas.
There are a few themes that have arisen as a result of the audits of overseas partnerships conducted this year, some of which are either new or provide a different emphasis from previous findings. For example, we encountered a number of instances in several countries where the use of a language other than English was an element in the delivery or assessment of a programme. It is clear that the challenges associated with translation of teaching material or assessments should be considered very carefully before such an arrangement is agreed.
There can also be difficulties in the delivery of programmes in English overseas, where English is not the first language of either the tutor or the student. A common difficulty relates to technical English in subjects where words are not in common English usage. In these cases the ability of tutors to use these words accurately, and for students to understand their full meaning, needs to be carefully addressed.
An important dimension in an overseas partnership is the status of the partner, whether a commercial or public institution. Whilst in no way implying that commercial partners are not as reliable as public institutions, the commercial aspirations of a partner can change the way a partnership is conducted. This can be to the detriment of the students in a way that is less likely with partners in the public sector. In at least one instance the partner institution had been taken over, with a consequent change in the way the partner operated. There is no simple way to ensure that such difficulties do not arise. Careful and explicit wording of the agreement, and an appreciation of the potential for problems, would assist in mitigating the impact on the students' experience of changes arising from commercial pressure.
Nicola Channon
Licensing and review
We have been developing the QAA Recognition Scheme for Access to Higher Education. This has included the production of explicit licensing criteria for the authorised validating agencies (AVAs) which validate Access to Higher Education courses. From January 2002 these criteria will be implemented. They will become a key reference point for the processes of AVA licensing and review, the central part of our activity in relation to Access to Higher Education. We have reviewed 17 AVAs and issued new licences to two more (out of a total of 28 AVAs in England and Wales).
Statistics
Since January 2001 we have continued to develop, and make available, statistical information about recognised Access to Higher Education courses, the students who take these courses and their progression into higher education. In addition to the information we receive directly from the AVAs, we have considered a range of statistics from other sources. Some of the relevant data has come from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, and the further and higher education funding councils.
In May 2001, following consultation and collaboration with colleagues from these agencies, we held a joint national symposium to present the conclusions of this work to AVA representatives. A leaflet was published, Access to Higher Education Key Statistics 2001, providing an overview of the data. This leaflet includes information about numbers of students, courses and the student profile. It also contains information about the subjects studied by Access to Higher Education students. Copies are available free of charge from Jean McLaren, Access Administrator on 01452 557118 (email j.mclaren@qaa.ac.uk). Our work in this area will continue, and in 2002 another statistics bulletin will be produced.
The detailed statistical information on which this digest is based and all published Access reports are available on our web site.
QAA-recognised Access to Higher Education courses
Access to Higher Education courses, which are recognised through our Scheme, are no longer referred to as 'kitemarked', but may use the formal designation 'QAA-recognised'. These courses are listed on the UCAS web site at www.ucas.ac.uk. Students who have successfully completed a QAA-recognised course are awarded a certificate bearing the Access logo.
Kath Dentith
Update on the Code of practice
In July and September 2001 two new sections of the Code of practice were published - Section 9: Placement learning, and Section 10: Recruitment and admissions. Both were finalised after consultation with the higher education sector and other stakeholders, in line with all sections of the Code.
We are now working with representatives from the sector to develop guidance on the accreditation of prior learning (APL). Informal feedback suggests that a guidance document, rather than a new section of the Code, is the best way to promote good practice in this area at present. We hope this document will be available early in 2002.
We have received requests from various organisations to produce further sections of the Code that would address specific issues. We do not intend to start working on any further sections for the time being. But we are planning to publish an introductory statement that highlights the main themes running through the Code. In addition, a review of the earliest sections of the Code, published in 1999, will be undertaken in 2002 to ensure their continued currency.
All sections of the Code are available on our web site or in hard copy.
Julie Swan
In July 2001 we published draft subject benchmark statements for a range of subject areas. Comment on the drafts was invited during the consultation period, which closed on 16 November. The publication of the statements in their final form, which should take place early in 2002, will complete the exercise to facilitate the preparation of subject benchmark statements for bachelors degree with honours in 42 broad subject areas. We have appreciated the enthusiastic work of the subject communities concerned.
Within the next three months, we will be starting a project to gain insight into the ways the benchmark statements and other reference points are being used and understood within the higher education sector.
Our progress on the project will also be published on our web site, and in future editions of higher quality.
Mike Laugharne
The progress file initiative is concerned with transcripts and personal development planning as an integral, and integrating, part of academic study.
In May 2000 Universities UK, Universities Scotland, SCoP and the Agency published a joint policy statement on progress files for higher education. In February 2001 this statement was revised1. The Progress Files Implementation Group (PFIG) was consequently established to monitor and support the introduction of progress files. Representation on the group includes representatives from Universities UK, Universities Scotland, SCoP and the Agency.
The PFIG works closely with the two main practitioner networks concerned with recording achievement: the Centre for Recording Achievement (CRA)2 and Personal Development Planning in Higher Education (Scotland)3. The PFIG is supported by a large advisory group that has representatives from many different interest groups. The group is also pleased to be working with student and employer organisations, and various professional bodies.
The PFIG's strategy includes, a) providing resources for supporting the introduction of the progress file, b) the coordination of activities with the various practitioner networks and subject communities, and c) a research agenda to provide evidence of the different opportunities and approaches to progress files, and their costs and benefits.
The CRA web site contains a wide range of material and links, including a number of case studies relating to higher education. The Learning and Teaching Support Network web site4 includes a series of working papers and details of several conferences and workshops.
Universities UK and SCoP have conducted a survey of work undertaken or planned within institutions on the implementation of transcripts and personal development planning. In November 2001, the results of this survey will be published in a joint briefing note from Universities UK and SCoP.
Nick Harris
1 www.qaa.ac.uk/crntwork/progfileHE/guidelines/progfile2001.PDF
2 www.recordingachievement.org
3 www.eds.napier.ac.uk/PDP
4 www.ltsn.ac.uk
Supporting the framework for qualifications of higher education in Scotland
The Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF) is the national framework for all levels of learning and qualifications in Scotland. We are continuing our work with Universities Scotland, the Scottish Qualifications Authority and the Scottish Executive to develop and implement the Framework. A Joint Advisory Committee for the SCQF has been established, with representatives from key organisations and stakeholders across all sectors of education and training in Scotland.
We are delighted that Dr Andrew Cubie recently accepted an invitation from the Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning to chair the Committee. His appointment coincides with a significant period of SCQF developments. The 'first phase' resulted in the publication of An introduction to the SCQF (October 2001). It describes the main purposes, structure and features of the Framework, including the range, features and purposes of the main Scottish qualifications. Full details of the parts of the SCQF that relate to higher education institutions were published by us in February 2001 (The framework for qualifications of higher education institutions in Scotland).
For the second phase, the Committee will focus on developing the potential of the SCQF as an integrated framework for lifelong learning in Scotland. The Framework should allow all providers of education, training, learner guidance and information services, to coordinate and integrate their provision and services. We will continue to play a full role in supporting this development of the SCQF, which is fundamental to the Scottish Executive's arrangements for wider participation in lifelong learning. Our work with the higher education sector in this area is still coordinated through the Scottish Advisory Committee on Credit and Access (SACCA -a joint QAA/Universities Scotland committee). One of the current priorities of SACCA is developing further education and higher education credit links. This is being taken forward through a newly established working group.
Conference
On 17 December 2001, a national SCQF conference will be held at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. It has been organised jointly with Universities Scotland, the Scottish Qualifications Authority, the Scottish Executive and partners on the Joint Advisory Committee. The main theme of the conference will be the role of the Framework as an integrated approach to lifelong learning in Scotland. The conference will include presentations from Wendy Alexander MSP, Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning; Alex Neil MSP, Convenor of the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee; Dr Andrew Cubie; and principal speakers from the main sectors of education in Scotland.
Details from our Glasgow office.
David Bottomley
How it all fits together: quality assurance and the standards infrastructure
Over the last four years we have been developing a new 'infrastructure' to strengthen, elaborate and make more comprehensible the purposes and outcomes of higher education in the UK. The main features of this infrastructure were defined in the Dearing report on higher education (1997).
What is distinctive, perhaps unique, about the UK approach is that it recognises the importance of identifying agreed reference points in HE. These both enable universities and colleges to make clear the full variety of what they provide and help the public to grasp and to benefit from it. That is a particularly important task in the UK where we attempt to maintain broadly comparable academic standards across the whole of higher education, within an academic community that prizes highly the diversity both of its ends and of its means.
Clarity and accessibility
An approach that is based on standards requires clarity and accessibility. But previous investigation shows that it has been hard to know what academic standards actually are, or who is responsible for them. And, even when they have been identified, they have been difficult for non-academics to understand.
Dearing's solution to the conundrum of national standards and local diversity was to propose a series of common reference points, accepted across the sector, relating to the standards of programmes and qualifications. They are not detailed prescriptions, but assemblies of 'characteristics' which an observer can expect to see in any qualification, subject and programme.
The standards infrastructure
The elements of the infrastructure, described below, complement each other and provide a set of reference points. These generate, elucidate and communicate academic standards. They may be regarded as the most innovative and distinctive feature of the emerging UK quality assurance arrangements. The infrastructure has, surprisingly, attracted little analysis; few have grasped its novelty and ambitious aims. The comments received on particular components have usually been directed toward one element seen in isolation from the others, and not on their underlying principle. Worse, an entirely false perception has grown up that the main (perhaps only) purpose of the infrastructure and its elements is to provide the basis for external review by the Agency.
The elements of the infrastructure
- The frameworks for higher education qualifications, two variants, one for Scotland and another for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, these describe the characteristics of the awards and qualifications at a number of levels of higher education, from undergraduate certificate to doctorate;
- the Code of practice for the assurance of academic quality and standards in higher education, setting out guidelines on good practice relating to the management of academic quality and standards;
- Subject benchmark statements, initially for honours degrees for 42 broadly defined fields, describing the nature of the general intellectual characteristics which the subject aims to develop in a student, and which an honours degree holder in the subject might be expected to be able to demonstrate;
- programme specifications, an opportunity for institutions to provide information about the structure and function of their programmes of study, to specify learning outcomes, and to allow diversity to be 'mapped'.
The 'expository' approach: the academic community in dialogue with itself
The four activities have several common features, but their key similarity is an 'expository' approach to standards. This can be explained by contrasting it with its opposite, the 'prescriptive'. The four infrastructural elements are expository because each sets out to identify and elaborate good practice already in existence, or to build upon it. This encourages the academic community into dialogue with itself and the translation of the traditionally implicit into a more explicit form. Academic practices may, as a result, become more amenable to critical analysis, evaluation and improvement. The elements are intended to stimulate a new kind of discourse about academic judgement, not to supplant that judgement. A prescriptive approach, however, starts from an assumption of deficiency. This is not the approach we have taken, as we encourage the higher education sector to focus on existing good practice.
An example: subject benchmarking
Subject benchmarking provides a useful illustration of what we mean when referring to reference points (for standards). A set of subject benchmarks could be, and has been taken by some to be, a list of outcomes to be achieved. This is not our intention; we interpret subject benchmarks as reference points. The distinction between such reference points and required outcomes can be explained by analogy. A reference point is like a map: it links the particular with the general and throws more light on it; it says where we are and where we can go.
Overall, the possession of a map widens choice. In contrast, a required outcome is like an itinerary: it tells us where we should go, with little contextual information, and might have nothing to say about other possible journeys or options. Although an itinerary has its purposes and uses, a map increases possible choice or general awareness.
The infrastructural activities create structures and activities that encourage, or induce, academics into mapping and interrogating their own tacit practices and underlying assumptions. Their aim is not to instruct academics in what they should do. The expository approach is appropriate for a mass higher education environment, as the strengths of expert professional process are not eroded. This approach can provide a firmer foundation for quality assurance and make it more comprehensible to non-specialists.
The academy and society
If the standards infrastructure offers a new opportunity for the academic
community to look afresh at its activities in order to understand them
better, it also offers the general public the prospect of more, and more
understandable, information about what higher education is and does. More
explicit and accessible explanations of what is available to students,
and why, will increasingly form the basis of the new compact between the
academy and society.
Students intending to invest their time and money in higher education need reassurance
that their qualification will have currency value in the employment market. They
will also need to know that they will be spending their time in an interesting
and worthwhile way, developing themselves and their personal abilities in a context
of intellectual challenge. The elements of the infrastructure have been designed
to make sure that whatever individual courses, programmes, academics, departments,
schools, faculties and institutions are offering are made clear and, in practice,
are provided.
Peter Wright
Peter Williams
Subscribers' meeting 2002
Following the success of the first Subscribers' meeting in March 2001, the next meeting has been scheduled. It will take place on Monday 20 May at the Edinburgh Conference Centre at Heriot-Watt University. Invitations will be sent to heads of all subscribing institutions. The meeting will offer delegates an opportunity to discuss current higher education issues and question members of the Board of the Agency.
Further information about our work, and the documents discussed in this edition of higher quality, can be found on our web site.
Breaking the 30 million barrier
The site now receives 2.5 million hits a month - a total of 30 million a year. In October 1999, when the site was consolidated at the current address, there were an average of 7,500 hits each day.Today the daily average number of hits is just over 82,000, a tenfold rise in two years.The text-only version of the site will be launched by the end of the year. Subject review reports are only available on our existing site, but will be added to the text-only version by Easter 2002.
We welcome any comments or suggestions on how we can improve the web site.
Additional copies
Printed copies of higher quality are available free of charge.
Our publications are available from:
Linney Direct, Adamsway, Mansfield, Nottinghamshire NG18 4FN.
Telephone 01623 450788, Fax 01623 450629, Email qaa@linneydirect.com
Top
QAA updates
QAAtweets
QAAtube