Quality assurance of overseas collaborative provision
The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) was established in 1997 to contribute to the maintenance and improvement of the quality and standards of all UK higher educational provision, wherever and however this is offered to students. To this end, QAA undertakes regular academic quality audits of individual institutions to review the operation and effectiveness of arrangements for assuring quality and standards.
Quality audits also cover the arrangements which institutions use to assure the quality and standards of their awards and programmes offered in collaboration with other partners, both within and outside the UK. As part of this process, QAA has extended its audit procedures enabling audit teams to visit overseas partners of UK institutions so that the same enquiries can be made of arrangements for safeguarding UK awards and programmes offered to students outside the UK as are made of UK-based provision. This initiative has been designed to help provide enhanced confidence in the work of UK universities and colleges operating overseas.
QAA's enquiries have been assisted by the publication in December 1996 of the former Higher Education Quality Council's revised Code of Practice for Overseas Collaborative Provision in Higher Education. This offers guidance on good practice and a framework within which institutions can review and consider their current and future activities. The Code of Practice has been widely welcomed and has been used as a common point of reference for the programme of overseas visits. Shortly after this overseas audit visit, QAA published a Code of practice for the assurance of academic quality and standards in higher education: Collaborative provision. This document will form the basis of overseas auditing activities undertaken with effect from Summer 2000.
The UK universities and colleges, with the agreement of their overseas partners, were voluntary participants in the programme of overseas visits. Their collaborative links cover between them a range of programmes and subjects, levels of award and different forms of institutional partnership.
This report is one of a number of reports published from the summer 1999 overseas audit programme to Ireland.
1 This is a report of an academic audit carried out by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) of the quality assurance arrangements for two partnerships to deliver separate schemes of study through franchise arrangements between the University of Glamorgan and Portobello College Dublin, and the University of Glamorgan and Cork College of Commerce. The University's franchise of a scheme of study to Portobello College leads to a range of named awards within a BA (Hons) Business Studies. The University's franchise of a scheme of study to Cork College of Commerce leads to a Diploma in Higher Education (Dip HE) in Estate Management Surveying.
2 The visit to the University took place on 26 and 27 April 1999. In the course of the visit members of the audit team scrutinised the materials made available in a base room set aside for the purpose. In the course of the visit members of the team met the Chair and Secretary of the University's Quality Audit Committee; the Head of the School of the Built Environment; the Head of the Business School; members of University-level and school-level committees and staff responsible for supporting each of the franchised schemes, and the external examiners for the University's 'parent' programmes to its franchises with Cork College of Commerce and Portobello College. In the course of this visit, members of the team also met former students of Cork College who had progressed to the University to study for an honours degree, having successfully completed their Dip HE studies in Cork. The members of the team who visited the University were Professor R A Pearce, Mr J C P Raban and Dr D Timms, auditors; and Mr G Clark, audit secretary. Dr D W Cairns accompanied the team for QAA. One member of the team visited the base room in the University, together with the QAA Assistant Director, on 30 April 1999.
3 Members of the audit team visited Cork College of Commerce (henceforth Cork, or Cork College) on 24 May 1999. For this visit, the members of the team were Professor R A Pearce and Dr D Timms, auditors; and Mr G Clark, audit secretary. Dr D W Cairns accompanied the team for QAA. In the course of their visit members of the team met the Course Director and Members of the Cork-based Diploma award management board and a group of students studying for the University's award. In all, the team met more than 20 members of Cork College of Commerce, some on more than one occasion.
4 Professor R A Pearce and Dr D Timms, auditors; and Mr G Clark, audit secretary, visited Portobello College (Portobello) on 28 May 1999 and Dr D W Cairns again accompanied the audit team for QAA. In the course of their visit the team met the President of the College; the Director and Head of the Business Department; members of the College's award management board for the franchised provision, and students studying for the University's award. In all, the team met more than 25 members of Portobello College, some on more than one occasion.
5 The audit team wishes to record its appreciation for the readiness of those whom it met on its visits to the University to discuss its quality assurance arrangements. The team is grateful to members of Cork College of Commerce and members of Portobello College who made time to meet it to discuss the University's arrangements to assure the quality of the franchised provision leading to its awards and safeguard the academic standards of the latter, and its particular gratitude is offered to the University's external examiners for travelling to meet it at the University.
6 Prior to the audit visit, the University provided QAA with briefing documents, comprising an Overview, covering the University's general arrangements for all such links, and Commentaries for each of two schemes of study franchised to Portobello College and the franchised scheme offered at Cork College. These documents were supported by illustrative material, describing the University's arrangements for assuring the quality of the students' learning opportunities. One of the Commentaries related to a scheme franchised to Portobello College leading to the award of a BA (Hons) Accounting and Finance from which the final group of students had graduated in 1998, and which therefore did not form part of the audit.
7 The supporting papers provided by the University included its Quality Assurance Handbook (the Handbook), which contained a section on collaborative activity, copies of formal contracts between the University and its two partner institutions in Ireland (see below, paragraph 26), and various documents describing University policies and procedures bearing on its collaborative activities. At the time of the visit to the University not all the information requested by the audit team could be provided, and the information contained in other papers was inaccurate in some cases and conflicting in others (see below, paragraphs 9 and 23). During its visits to Portobello College and to Cork College of Commerce, members of the team were provided with further information describing recent developments in the links between the University and each of its partners (see below, paragraph 32).
8 The Overview described the University's policy on partnership in broad outline, and listed its current arrangements for assuring the quality of learning opportunities and learning and pastoral support in partnerships. These included: arrangements for institutional approval; for the validation of University programmes of study franchised to partner institutions; for review of the operation of partnerships and programmes, and for various other aspects of quality assurance, including formal agreements, quality control, qualifications of staff, language of instruction, entry qualifications, information and publicity, and the conduct of student assessments. The Overview provided only limited guidance on the procedures the University had actually followed to assure the quality of the schemes franchised to its partners in Ireland, and to safeguard the academic standards of its awards. The University has since informed the audit team that the discrepancy had arisen because the University's quality assurance arrangements had undergone a major revision between the initial establishment of the collaborations and the audit visit. The Cork and Portobello Commentaries, however, each described arrangements corresponding to most of the University's other arrangements for the quality assurance of collaborative provision described in the Overview.
9 The University's Overview was an inadequate guide to the nature of the University's policy for overseas collaborations. The Portobello Commentary and the Cork Commentary, although largely descriptive, provided useful starting points for the audit. Throughout the audit the University had some difficulty in providing information to support the process. The University will wish to review and recast its central arrangements for holding and retrieving definitive archival and current documents and statistical data for each of its collaborative arrangements.
The institutional context for collaborative provision
10 The University's Mission is to 'provide and promote access to learning opportunities of the highest quality nationally and internationally and to foster social, cultural and economic development, especially in Wales, through the extension and application of knowledge'. The University describes its Mission as being characterised by six strategic goals which included: 'to promote access for students who would not otherwise enter higher education'; and to 'maximise ''added value'' by enhancing competence as well as through the acquisition of knowledge'; and 'to enable students to determine their own pace and place of study and choice of subjects'.
The University's taxonomy of collaborative arrangements
11 In 1996 the former HEQC conducted an academic audit of the University's quality assurance arrangements for its collaborative provision (the 1996 report). This report was concerned only in part with overseas collaboration. The University's taxonomy of collaborative arrangements as set out in the 1996 report distinguishes between 'outreach awards', which are designed, developed and delivered by another institution but approved by the University, and 'franchise, joint, distance delivery and other forms of collaborative activity', where a scheme, award or module(s) of the University's educational provision has previously been designed and validated by the University and offered at one of its campuses. The majority of students studying for awards of the University through franchise or joint programmes do so in other institutions in Wales. Overseas collaborative students are mainly registered for franchised programmes: the University's partnerships with Portobello College and Cork College are defined as franchises.
12 The 1996 HEQC report on the University's quality assurance arrangements for its collaborative provision commented that its development had been 'initially undertaken in a somewhat piecemeal fashion as individual subject departments responded to invitations, approaches and opportunities as they arose'. In its conclusions, the 1996 report recommended that the University should give 'close attention to the benefits of co-ordinating the activities of central University agencies and individual departments' and that it would be advisable to refine and promulgate 'its strategic plan for the development of collaborative arrangements'.
13 Since publication of the 1996 report, the University's Academic Board has adopted a 'new model of quality assurance' the key features of which include: 'devolution of responsibility of quality assurance to departments'; 'audit by the centre of the devolved powers'; 'retention of central responsibility for approval and review of collaborative partners, outreach awards (see above, paragraph 11), subjects new to the University, submission of proposals to external and professional bodies'; 'acceptance of quality assurance rather than quality control'; and 'maintenance of common University regulations and quality assurance procedures'. The rationale for these changes, as stated in the University's current Quality Handbook, is that they arise from the need to respond to rapid change, and for 'quality and standard systems that will be both flexible and will maintain and enhance the quality of their products at recognised standards'.
14 The University considers that its new arrangements are based on the audit of the 'departmental, or devolved, responsibility for the management of quality and standards through quality audit', which it sees as 'a structured process to check the health (fitness for purpose and effectiveness) of [its] arrangements for the management of the quality and standards of education'. The University expects that its new arrangements will, inter alia, enable it 'to respond better to the expectations and requirements of external quality audit and quality assessment, and 'ensure that departments are duly accountable for the quality and standards of their work'. As part of these changes, the University-level Quality and Standards Committee described by the 1996 report has been replaced by the present Quality Audit Committee (QAC).
15 The aims and objectives listed in the University's current strategic plans include an explicit statement that it wishes to play 'an expanding role in European and international higher education both through academic linkages with counterpart institutions and through focused development of overseas franchise arrangements'. This statement was now said to 'focus [the University's] direction in identifying partners'. In June 1998, the University's Academic Board approved an International Policy and established a Strategy Development Group to implement the International Policy and to develop 'operational protocols' in support of it, including 'a readily accessible and up-to-date database of current activities'. The audit team saw no evidence in the base room documents that the Strategy Development Group had been at work, and the database referred to above did not, as yet, appear to have been implemented. The University's statement of its International Policy was included in its briefing materials, but no member of the University referred to it in the course of discussions with the team, nor was it referred to more widely in any of the University's briefing documents or other papers seen by the team.
16 The changes to the University's arrangements described above have had consequences for its quality assurance arrangements for its collaborative provision, including provision overseas. Outreach provision remains subject to central University approval, monitoring, and review in the University's new arrangements. Responsibility for the quality assurance of franchised provision has, however, largely been devolved to schools where, together with the educational provision operated directly by the school, they are subject to scrutiny by a University-appointed 'Departmental Quality Assurance Committee' (DQAC) specific to each school. DQACs are chaired by appointees of the University's central QAC, who are external to the school; in addition, the University informed the audit team that their membership includes others from elsewhere in the University. QAC, which is responsible to the University's Academic Board, monitors and audits the work of each DQAC on a continuous basis, with reports at least once each year (see below, paragraph 40).
17 Each programme of studies, or 'scheme', is the responsibility of a named school, sometimes referred to as the 'home' school; within each school, quality control operates at the level of the scheme. In the case of the Business School all undergraduate provision, including provision in partner institutions, is administered and monitored within a single Undergraduate Scheme; in the School of the Built Environment, the quality control of the Cork franchise is incorporated within that for the University's undergraduate Surveying Scheme.
18 The University's current Quality Assurance Handbook contains a section on collaborative activity which, in the case of franchised provision, gives guidance on a range of procedures, including approval of the franchise, periodic review, and annual monitoring. The University has recently augmented these procedures by introducing requirements for business planning and institutional approval but, with these exceptions, the University's stated view is that in the cases of its franchises to Portobello College and Cork College, its arrangements for the maintenance of the quality of schemes offered through collaborative arrangements, and the standards of those of its awards attained through them, continue to be applied as described in its Handbook. The Overview and Commentaries provided no statement of the basis for the University's confidence that its current quality assurance arrangements could be relied upon to confirm that its requirements in these matters were being met.
The partnerships between the University of Glamorgan and Portobello College and between the University of Glamorgan and Cork College of Commerce
19 Portobello College is a private educational institution which has the objective of providing degree-level education primarily in business and professionally-based subjects. It was founded in 1988 as the Dublin Institute of Education Business College, which developed into Portobello College, and is now providing almost exclusively third level and professional studies. Current enrolment at the College is just under 900 students, of whom about 70 (see below, paragraph 20) are following programmes leading to awards of the University. In addition to its partnership with the University of Glamorgan, it has validation arrangements with the federal University of Wales for a programme of studies leading to LLB programmes of the University. The College is a designated institution of the Irish National Council for Educational Awards (NCEA) and many of the College's programmes of study now lead to NCEA awards. Portobello College occupies a campus in the centre of Dublin, comprising four buildings with tutorial and lecture space, computer workshops, a library and cafe and gymnasium facilities.
20 The University's initial links with Portobello College date from 1991. At the beginning of their relations, Portobello wished to offer higher education business studies programmes to supplement provision in an Irish state system where demand for places was said to outstrip supply. Since the College's accreditation from NCEA in 1993, the annual enrolment for programmes of study franchised from the University has fallen but in 1998-99, 71 students were registered for up to six named Business Studies awards of the University. The Portobello Commentary stated that in the 1998-99 session, 2,000 students were studying for the University's awards through franchise arrangements for which its Business School was responsible.
21 Cork College of Commerce was founded in 1908 and is a constituent school of the City of Cork Vocational Education Committee. The Business Studies Department, in which the University's franchised Dip HE programme is located, is one of four constituent departments of the College. The College states that it is 'the largest provider of post-Leaving Certificate courses in Ireland': in the 1998-99 session it enrolled some 2,600 students. The College provides a range of full-time and evening courses, the majority of which are vocational in orientation and designed to meet the needs of post-school and mature students. Its link with the University dates from 1993.
22 The University's Dip HE programme was franchised to Cork College in 1993 to provide students successfully completing a two-year Certificate in Auctioneering and Estate Agency Management, accredited by the Irish Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers (IPAV), with opportunities to progress to the University's Dip HE and, to the final year of its BSc (Hons) in Estate Management Surveying (Auctioneering) at the University. Many entrants to the two-year Certificate programme at the College are qualified at a level lower than typical Irish higher education entrants and it is part of the College's Mission 'to provide courses for those students who either did not qualify for, or did not wish to proceed to, University'. At Cork College, 20 students were registered as following studies leading to the University's Dip HE in 1998-99.
Initial validation and approval of the partnerships:
Portobello College
23 The University's Commentary on its BA (Hons) Business Studies link with Portobello College stated that collaboration 'began in 1992 when the BA Business Studies degree was franchised'. The original record of the event indicates that approval by the former Polytechnic of Wales of franchises of programmes of study leading to its BA (Hons) Business Studies and the BA (Hons) Accounting and Finance was recommended in the course of the same event, in June 1991 (see above, paragraph 20 and below, paragraph 24). In 1991 the programmes franchised by the University's predecessor led to degrees of the Council for National Academic Awards; following the closure of the latter in 1992, the programmes have led to awards of the University. The descriptions of the processes of institutional approval, franchise validation, and the conclusion of formal agreements in the Portobello Commentary, which was provided by the University's Business School related, however, to the University's current Handbook and were expressed in general terms. In advance of its visit, the audit team therefore asked to see a copy of the report of the validation panel for this latter franchise.
24 In 1991, the predecessor of the present Quality and Standards Committee of the University's Academic Board was the Validation and Review Committee (VRC) of the Polytechnic. The report of the VRC to the Academic Board on the proposed franchises consisted of two paragraphs, reporting a visit by a VRC panel to the predecessor of Portobello College, the Institute of Education Business College, Dublin. The first paragraph of the report stated the purpose of the visit as being, inter alia, to 'ensure that the Polytechnic's quality assurance standards could be met and that all business and administrative arrangements between the Institute and Polytechnic were agreed upon'. The second paragraph of the report stated the conclusions of the panel, which were that 'it had every confidence in the Institute and its teaching staff to deliver effectively the degree programme, and had no hesitation in recommending approval for the full-time BA (Hons) Business Studies and BA (Hons) Accountancy and Finance to be franchised to the Institute. This was on the understanding that the operation of the degrees would be monitored annually and progress reviewed in parallel with the degrees at the Polytechnic'. On this basis, the VRC panel had recommended approval 'for first-year enrolment only on both degrees, to allow the teaching staff to approach gradually the introduction of the degree programmes'. The grounds on which the VRC panel had come to these conclusions were not stated in its report to the Academic Board.
Initial validation and approval of the partnerships:
Cork College
25 The report of the panel which had recommended approval of the franchise of the Dip HE to Cork College in 1993 was provided at the visit to the University. The panel which conducted the validation event on behalf of the QSC recommended, as a condition of approval, that library provision at Cork College be improved and that validation of the franchised scheme be for one year only, with a review after the first year of operation, in May 1994 (see below, paragraph 33). The audit team was told that the Head of the University's School of the Built Environment had been charged with ensuring that the condition in respect of library provision had been fulfilled, and that in October 1993 he had confirmed to the University's Registrar that the requirement had been satisfactorily met (see below, paragraph 81). In response to this initial validation requirement, it appeared that a 'resource room' had been established in the College, which housed books and other resources relevant to the Dip HE students and doubled as a staff room. This room continues to serve as the chief learning resource centre for the franchised Dip HE (see below, paragraph 81).
The University's formal agreements with Portobello
College and Cork College of Commerce
26 A copy of an agreement (referred to as a 'contract') between the University and Portobello College, dating from 1995, was provided by the University. A similar copy of an agreement was provided in respect of Cork College of Commerce, dating from September 1998. The contracts provide a skeleton arrangement and refer the reader to other University documents and procedures for detail. They conformed to a common model, with only slight variations. Each contract identifies the Academic Board of the University, acting through the relevant committees, as responsible for safeguarding and maintaining academic standards. Each also identifies the University's scheme boards as having primary operational responsibility for the franchises, and states that membership of the boards shall include members from the staff and students of the partner colleges. The University's partner institutions are required to set up boards of management to monitor and manage the University's franchised provision; formally such boards of management are sub-committees of the University-based scheme boards, the school committees charged with monitoring the progress and management of the scheme. In line with this requirement, both partner institutions in Ireland have established boards which report to the relevant scheme-level award boards in the University.
27 Both contracts state that annual monitoring reports, or review reports, for University schemes should include separately identified sections on the franchise partners. Individuals with responsibility for liaison between the University and partner institutions, via the respective school ('franchise officers') are identified by role. Responsibility for assessment and examination is vested in the University's field (that is, subject and discipline level) and award level examination boards. Each partner institution is stated to be responsible for 'student recruitment and enrolment, student location, student tutoring and general welfare and discipline'. The contract with Portobello College states that monitoring of the academic provision at the College is to be conducted in accordance with the University's procedures; that for Cork is less unequivocal, but it is not clear from the wording of either contract whether the partner institution in each case is required to accept the provisions of the University's Handbook, and to operate quality procedures for collaborative provision in accordance with them.
28 The contracts require that any reference to the University's award must identify the University as the awarding body, and that advertisements and other publicity material must be cleared by the University's Head of Marketing, prior to submission for publication. Each contract refers to schedules describing financial arrangements. Each contract states that the agreements may be terminated by either party at a year's notice, provided that suitable arrangements can be made for students whose programmes of study are incomplete. Arrangements to admit students to each of the franchised programmes are described elsewhere in this report (see below, paragraphs 56 (Portobello) and 59 (Cork)).
Quality assurance of academic provision
29 The means currently employed by the University to assure the quality of its academic provision include the periodic review of partner institutions to ensure their fitness to support provision leading to the University's awards; periodic review and annual monitoring and review of academic provision. The devolved quality assurance arrangements within which these processes are situated are described elsewhere in this report (see above, paragraph 13).
30 The process for institutional review described in the University's Overview and its Commentaries, was introduced by the University in 1997 and did not apply at the time the partnerships were established. The University's current arrangements make provision for institutional review after four years of operation. The Overview stated that both Portobello College and Cork College were due for institutional review in 1998-99. At the time that the Overview was produced, the partnership between the University and Portobello College had been in operation for eight years and that with Cork College of Commerce for six years.
31 Members of the University's Business School associated with the operational management of the franchise with Portobello College, and their colleagues in the School of the Built Environment with similar responsibilities for the franchise to Cork College, who would be responsible for providing supporting information for the review, were not aware of the forthcoming institutional reviews which, according to the Overview, were due to take place shortly. Members of the University's QAC, which has the responsibility of establishing panels to conduct such reviews, were also unaware of arrangements for the forthcoming institutional reviews of the Colleges, although QAC had approved the dates for those institutional reviews in a schedule of prospective events for 1998-99.
32 In view of the longevity of its partnerships in Ireland, and the fact that they were initiated without benefit of a process now deemed necessary by the Handbook, the University might wish to ensure that there is no slippage in the timetable now established for the institutional reviews of Portobello College and Cork College.
33 Periodic reviews of schemes are conducted throughout the University at department and school level. Departments may choose to review all the schemes for which they are responsible as part of the same exercise, or to review schemes individually. Franchised schemes are reviewed as part of the review of the 'parent' scheme and, since the 'parent' schemes for those franchised to Portobello College and Cork College are located in different departments and different schools, each of the University's franchised schemes in Ireland has been subject to the form of periodic review followed in respect of its parent scheme.
34 According to the Handbook, the objectives of review include to 'evaluate the operation of the department's taught programmes and to consider whether the schemes and any franchise operation should continue in approval'; to 'ensure that feedback from students, employers, external examiners and external consultants has been considered and addressed as part of the review process and that the curriculum remains relevant to the disciplines and appropriate internal and external stakeholders (including students, professional accrediting bodies and employers)'; to 'identify strengths and weaknesses in the delivery of the department's provision'; and to 'identify any areas of good practice for wider dissemination within the University'.
35 The original validation of the franchise of the University's Dip HE to Cork College was conditional on a review being undertaken after the first year of operation. This review was conducted in May 1994 and the report seen by the audit team was of a review of progress by the School's designated co-ordinator for the link for the School of the Built Environment. The review document describes several matters considered at the initial validation, such as admissions, the student experience, the management of the course and staff development. It includes minutes of Cork-based scheme management boards, and a description of progress made on improvements to learning resources, including library resources (see below, paragraph 81). The Dip HE programme at Cork College was also reviewed in December 1996, as part of the process for its professional recognition by the Incorporated Society of Valuers and Auctioneers (ISVA). The review document provided for ISVA appeared to have been based on the document produced for the 1994 review, but included data from additional cohorts of students; it was not in itself a report to the University.
36 Subsequent to these reviews, the University's franchise to Cork College was evaluated within the periodic review of the Surveying Scheme, conducted by the School of the Built Environment for the University's Surveying Scheme in July 1998. The document prepared by the School to support the review included a two-page section on the Dip HE scheme franchised to Cork College but did not involve a visit to Cork by a University panel.
37 In the case of the scheme(s) franchised to Portobello College, periodic review has been conducted within the arrangements for the review of the Undergraduate Business Studies Scheme in 1997-98. In line with University practice, there was no separate review document produced in respect of the franchises to Portobello College, no visit to the College by a review panel, and no separate report on the standing of the link.
38 The University's present approach to the periodic review of the operation of franchised schemes, whilst it provides the basis for the production of substantial documents, provides little opportunity at the scheme level to make full, periodic, critical appraisals of the operation of the franchised elements of the provision, to update that made at the initial approval of the franchise. In the view of the audit team, the degree of attention devoted to franchised provision in the University's reviews of its Business Studies schemes and its Surveying Scheme, both in 1997-98, provided insufficient evidence on which to base the five-year re-approval of each link in that year.
Annual monitoring and review of the franchised
provision
39 According to the Handbook the purposes of annual monitoring are to provide a mechanism for continuous improvement; provide assurance on the maintenance of standards; to ensure the 'good health' of the University's taught programmes; to stimulate critical self-appraisal, and to provide 'regular independent comment and appraisal' of the extent to which the provision is meeting its objectives. Arrangements for annual monitoring vary in practice between schools.
40 The Handbook states that each partner institution is responsible for carrying out its own annual monitoring exercise in line with the University's procedures, and that it should submit its annual monitoring report through the scheme co-ordinator at the University, where it will inform the annual monitoring report for the scheme as a whole. A single summary report is subsequently made by, or on behalf of, the head of school to the school-level DQAC. This report takes in the outcomes of the annual monitoring process for all schemes for which the school is responsible; it need not be copied to other members of the school or agreed by them. Each DQAC is responsible for ensuring that the monitoring and reviewing activities for which the relevant school is responsible have been carried out. Since schools are responsible for the integrity of their annual monitoring processes and for agreeing actions to remedy weaknesses and, since knowledge of the contents of the head's summary report may be restricted, it is important that the University can be confident that each DQAC carries out its responsibilities effectively: this is checked by an internal academic audit conducted by QAC (see above, paragraph 16).
41 The Business School conducts an annual review of the standing and progress of each of its schemes and at the same time reviews any associated franchises or other partnerships. The Business School brings together annual reports of all of its franchise and outreach schemes, including its overseas partnerships, a measure which appears to satisfy the requirement of the Handbook that the operation of franchised schemes should be the subject of discrete reporting. There appears to be no provision for a similar, University-level annual review of all University collaborative provision by QAC.
42 The annual monitoring reports produced by Portobello College and Cork College are different in style. Those submitted by Portobello College, to form part of the Business Studies Undergraduate Scheme annual monitoring report, appeared to be compendiums of working papers, such as minutes of scheme management boards conducted at Portobello and descriptions of the results of analysing student feedback. At the end of the annual monitoring process, it appeared that the College-based Co-ordinator at Portobello received the scheme reports from the Business School, and that they were circulated to the teaching team. The Co-ordinator at Portobello College did not, however, receive the Business School's report to its DQAC, or any resulting comments.
43 The Dip HE Co-ordinator at Cork College draws up regular written reports on the progress of the Dip HE scheme which are addressed to his counterpart in Glamorgan, but the Cork Co-ordinator was unaware of any further use to which they might be put. The Cork-based scheme board (a sub-committee of the University-based scheme management board) did not consider the reports drawn up by the Dip HE Programme Co-ordinator, and the reports played no part in the College's own quality assurance arrangements. The College's Dip HE Programme Co-ordinator was aware of the University's system of annual reporting at the scheme level, and believed that the minutes of the Cork-based scheme board and the reports of the University-based Co-ordinator for the Scheme informed the annual Surveying Scheme report.
44 The annual monitoring report of the School of the Built Environment to the School-level DQAC, compiled from all the School's annual reports, is not provided to the Dip HE Co-ordinator at Cork. As in the case of the Business School franchises, there appears to be no provision for Cork College to comment directly to the University on the development of the Dip HE franchise, independent of the School of the Built Environment. The University's annual monitoring process appears to have provided little or no feedback information to its two partner Colleges in Ireland on the University's perceptions of the development of the franchises and their parent Schemes.
45 The University's Handbook identifies 'peer review' as a cornerstone of its quality assurance arrangements, but the elements of peer review in the University's present annual monitoring arrangements are not clear. It is difficult for the audit team to see how the mechanism for annual monitoring, as practised, could provide reliable assurance at University level of the 'good health' of programmes, or meet the objective of 'critical self-appraisal' again stated in the Handbook. The University's annual monitoring process, as applied to its overseas franchised provision in Ireland, appeared to the team to run the risks of excessively condensing monitoring information and to rely on the views of the head of the relevant school, on whose managerial effectiveness they are a direct reflection. The annual monitoring process did not appear to the team to provide sufficient discrete information to enable each DQAC to assure itself, on behalf of the QAC, that the school under scrutiny was maintaining proper stewardship of the University's franchised provision overseas. Equally, it did not appear to the team that the resulting reports from the DQACs would allow the QAC, on behalf of the Academic Board, to be confident that the University had discharged its responsibilities to assure itself that the requirements and expectations in respect of its franchised programmes overseas were being met.
Feedback from students and employers
46 The University told the audit team that it obtained feedback information from its students chiefly through the annual monitoring process, in the course of which the views of students are sought by questionnaire to inform the partner institution's annual reports. The franchise officers appointed by schools to monitor and liaise with partners are able to meet students on periodic visits to the partner institutions. The constitutions for scheme boards of studies at the University of Glamorgan make provision for student representation from the franchised partners.
47 The 1994 review of the Cork Dip HE franchise stated that 'at the end of the first semester' all students had been asked to complete a questionnaire for course monitoring purposes in accordance with University procedures. The periodic review of the Surveying Scheme, conducted in July 1998, stated that 'at the end of each semester all students are asked to complete a questionnaire for course monitoring purposes in accordance with University procedures'. There was no reference to the outcomes of questionnaires in the minutes of the Cork-based award board, however, or in the informal end-of-semester reports produced by the Dip HE Programme Co-ordinator. The University has recently introduced arrangements to collect student feedback information module by module, at the end of each semester. Shortly before the visit of the audit team to Cork College a questionnaire, covering all modules on the Dip HE franchise in both semesters, had been administered for the first time and returned to the University. At the time of the team's visit to Cork College, its Dip HE co-ordinator had yet to be informed by the School when and how information on the outcomes from such questionnaires would be provided to the teaching team at the College.
48 The School of the Built Environment has further opportunities to seek information direct from Cork students when members of its staff visit Cork annually to recruit students to the final year of the BSc (Hons) Estate Management Surveying programme at Glamorgan; through the visits to Cork undertaken by the University's Scheme Leader, and during visits to Glamorgan by parties of Cork-based students. In the course of the most recent visit of Cork-based students to the University, the School had convened a Scheme Board, thus allowing representatives of the Cork-based students to exercise their right of membership of the University-based Scheme Board (see below, paragraph 85).
49 Members of Portobello College told the audit team that the standard University questionnaire was invariably used to gather student feedback information for the Business Studies scheme franchised to the College. Students at the College recollected the use of questionnaires for seeking their views, but could not recall any reference to the University on the standard forms used by the College to gather feedback information.
Pastoral care and academic counselling for students
50 The University states that it is 'fundamental that the franchise scheme, and the students' experience on it, is no different in quality or standard to that of the on-campus students'. The audit team saw no explicit requirements for pastoral care, including such matters as counselling provision, in any of the documents relating to its partnerships in Ireland provided by the University. In the cases of Portobello and Cork, the formal agreements define pastoral care and academic counselling as the responsibility of the Colleges.
51 Annual monitoring and review reports showed that, in practice, the University-based scheme boards responsible for each franchised programme maintained an interest in the non-academic aspects of students' experiences of their programmes of study. The document prepared for the periodic review of the Surveying Scheme, taking in the Cork Dip HE in 1998, for example, described the counselling arrangements put in place for Cork students. Following its discussions with members of staff and students at each partner College, it was clear to the audit team that the teaching teams responsible for the franchised schemes in each institution had close, frequent, and direct contact with their students. Students at both Colleges testified to the ready availability of staff and their active care and concern for the interests of the students.
The University's confidence in the quality assurance
arrangements for its franchised provision
52 The Portobello Commentary, provided by the University's Business School, states that the quality of provision in Portobello College is considered to have been effectively monitored and controlled. The Cork Commentary contains no general statement of confidence of this kind. Although the Overview did not state the level of the University's confidence in its present quality assurance arrangements, a senior member of the University with responsibility for academic quality assurance expressed confidence on its behalf in its systems to support the quality of programmes and the standards of awards.
53 The proper working of the University's devolved system for quality assurance relies on each level in the University's quality assurance arrangements providing the level above it with up-to-date, relevant and reliable information. The University considers that the present operation of its quality assurance arrangements allows it to be confident that the quality of learning opportunities offered to students within the partner institutions matches that of other University of Glamorgan students. The audit team could only partly support this view. If the information that the University relies upon to satisfy itself that all is well in its partnership provision is the same information that it provided to support the audit, its capacity to take a well-informed view of its partnership provision is open to question.
The academic standards of credits and awards
The University's account of its arrangements to safeguard the standards of its awards
54 The Overview states that the University assures itself that the academic standards of its awards are being safeguarded through a number of means. These include: approving the staff delivering programmes in the partner institutions on the basis of their qualifications and experience (see below, paragraph 76); monitoring students' entry qualifications (see below, paragraph 55); ensuring that tuition and assessment regimes and conditions are equal or equivalent for students of a scheme wherever it is located (see below, paragraphs 60 and 61), and giving the same external examiners responsibility for franchise as well as home assessments (see below, paragraph 67). The University's view is that the measures it has taken allow it to be confident that the academic standards attained by students within its franchised schemes are no different from those achieved by University-based students.
55 The Overview states that students pursuing awards at an overseas partner college are expected to have qualifications equivalent to those required of students undertaking awards in the University, and the Handbook indicates that all applications are subject to University approval by the head of school via the admissions tutor for the relevant school.
56 Under the terms of its contract with the University, Portobello College is allowed to admit students to the franchised scheme without seeking the prior agreement of the University. Students at Portobello may enter the franchised scheme(s) at several points during the year but the College normally provides the University with enrolment information only once, in November each year. The University acknowledges that this arrangement places difficulties in the way of providing accurate enrolment and registration statistics (see above, paragraph 9). That the University's present arrangements to record student enrolment and registration information were not wholly adequate to the task was apparent from the lists of students and their grades and awards approved by the University's examiners at field and awards boards, several examples of which had hand-written names from franchise centres appended.
57 The 1991 VRC panel report (see above, paragraph 24) provided no information on entry requirements for the BA (Hons) Business Studies at Portobello College, but the documents supporting the prospective 1999 institutional review of the College set out entry requirement for students with Irish Leaving Certificate and other qualifications. They are uninformative, however, about the approach adopted by the College in respect of applicants with non-standard qualifications. Direct entry with advanced standing to the franchised scheme at Portobello appears to have been common, with a number of students entering the scheme sometimes at the beginning of the final year of the programme. In the 1997-98 session, Portobello College embarked on the systematic recruitment of students in the People's Republic of China, some of whom had enrolled on the franchised scheme at the College at two points in September and late December. The University's annual monitoring reports and its other papers provided no evidence that it had been aware of this development.
58 The present arrangements for the enrolment of University students at Portobello appear to conflict with the reasonable expectations of the Handbook, and it is not clear at what point the University could intervene to protect its interests if it was subsequently decided that a student was unsuited to the programme for which he or she had been enrolled. While it appears that this has not posed a problem in the past, the College's stated intention to recruit a growing number of students from China to the franchised scheme will test the University's ability to monitor and control the admission of students to its franchised scheme in Dublin.
59 For the Dip HE scheme franchised to Cork College, the University stated that entrance requirements had been defined in the course of the original validation of the franchise as satisfactory performance in the two-year preliminary Certificate offered at the College and at Senior College, Dun Laoghaire, together with a successful interview conducted by Cork staff. In this instance, it appeared that entry qualifications were clearly specified and there have been no non-standard entrants to the Dip HE.
Academic standards - programme content
60 Modules delivered at both Portobello College and Cork College are based on the same module handbooks used by University-based students. Module handbooks are distributed to students at the University and at Cork College at the beginning of each semester. The content of a module is generally identical wherever it is taught, but it is possible for the content of modules and titles of assignments to be varied to suit local conditions and the requirements of professional accreditation, as in the case of the Surveying Scheme and the Dip HE at Cork College. In the case of the franchise to Portobello College, any variation in the content of a module must be agreed in advance with the module leader in the Business School. In the case of the School of the Built Environment, approval must additionally be ratified by the University's Leader of the Surveying Scheme, the University-based Diploma Co-ordinator, and the leader of the relevant subject field.
Assessment and classification arrangements
61 As a general rule the same diet of assessments is followed by students based at the partner Colleges and students based at the University. Where local conditions warranted a departure from University practice, as at Cork College, for example, to recognise differences between Irish and English and Welsh rating legislation, effective arrangements seemed to be in place to enable the programme to be modified, and for the University to agree to any necessary modification. According to the Handbook, requirements and criteria for assessments are set out in the first week of each semester. Criteria are normally accompanied by specimen answers or grading schemes.
62 The University's stated policy is for module leaders at the University to consult their opposite numbers in franchise partners before finalising assessments. Course work assignments for assessment must be submitted to the same deadlines in both franchise centres and the University, and examinations must be taken at the same time, under similar conditions. Students' assignments and examination scripts are marked at the franchise centres, and an agreed sample provided to the University for moderation.
63 The Cork Commentary states that examination papers are drafted by the University-based module leaders and agreed with their colleagues at Cork, and that communication difficulties have sometimes 'inhibited tutors at Cork from making as full an input as they would wish to the process within the comparatively short timescale available'. It was the view of the Cork-based Dip HE Co-ordinator that, in practice, sufficient notice was normally given of proposed examination papers for Cork-based staff to make a contribution to their development. The timing of the provision of coursework titles is specified by the Handbook as the first week of the semester and a process is prescribed for the specification of titles, through the link staff in the University and the franchise centres. At Cork College, 'course work assignments are distributed to students as near to the start of each semester as possible', usually about three weeks or so after the beginning of the semester. At Portobello College, staff confirmed that coursework titles are notified before the beginning of each semester, in time for them to be finalised by the date specified in the Handbook.
64 Whilst the Commentaries provided by the University do not mention a process of formal feedback from University staff on standards of marking, on a module by module basis, members of Portobello College stated that such practice was regularly followed, and that they found it to be a useful mechanism for ensuring that they maintained the University's academic standards. Staff at Cork College do not benefit from such an arrangement. It appeared that the practice described by staff at Portobello could improve the understanding of academic standards between the University and its partner institutions and it deserves to be commended as good practice to the University at large.
65 The terms of the Handbook leave open the possibility that moderation of assessments (examination scripts and course work) might be undertaken wholly at the partner college; however, the University's arrangements to safeguard the academic standards of its awards provide for University-based staff to moderate scripts and assignments marked in franchise centres, such as Portobello College and Cork College. At Portobello College, staff stated that although the timetable required by the University's arrangements caused staff in Dublin difficulty, scripts were all marked and a sample sent to Glamorgan for moderation three weeks before the meeting of the relevant field and award boards of examiners. Arrangements in the case of Cork College differ significantly from this practice: completed and assessed course work assignments and all marked examination scripts are normally taken by hand from Cork to the University for moderation when the Cork-based Dip HE Programme Co-ordinator visits the University to attend the field and award examination boards. He leaves Cork on day one, examination scripts and course work are available at the University from the time of his arrival, and for the whole of day two, and the relevant examination board takes place on day three. It appeared to the audit team that whilst arrangements between the partner institutions and the University made internal moderation possible in theory, in practice the time available, particularly for scrutiny of the scripts of the Cork-based students, was such that moderation by University staff of marks awarded by staff in its partner institutions could only be cursory (see below, paragraph 69).
66 Each Commentary states that the same examination boards and the same external examiners have responsibility for making assessment and progression decisions about students in a scheme, whether at the University or in the partner institution. Similarly, the University's procedures require that the same examination boards and external examiners make decisions about awards and classifications for all students within a scheme, irrespective of their place of study. The audit team noted several occasions, however, when award decisions in respect of franchise students had had to be postponed, to be dealt with by Chair's action, owing to the non-availability of scripts. This has the potential to undermine the University's claims for the capacity of its assessment procedures to safeguard the standard of all its awards irrespective of the place of study of its students.
Appointment and briefing of external examiners
67 The University uses the same external examiners to monitor the performance of students in its partner institutions and those based at the University, and the external examiners for both the BA (Hons) Business Studies and the Cork-based Dip HE and their parent programmes normally attend both field and award boards. The University appoints external examiners at field level (that is with responsibilities for subjects and disciplines) and award levels. External examiners with award responsibilities may also have field responsibilities, but this is unusual. Field boards meet each semester, award boards meet at the end of the session. The guidance of the University is that external examiners need attend only one field board yearly, though it is open to them to determine the frequency of visits with the University chair of the relevant board.
68 Reports from the external examiners for the schemes franchised to Portobello College and to Cork College suggested that in each case they had been provided with insufficient briefing before undertaking their responsibilities. Reports also indicated that the guidance provided by the University on how external examiners should deal with the work of students on franchised schemes was subject to change, without warning, from year to year. It seemed to the audit team that the marking and moderation responsibilities of external examiners for franchised schemes should be a matter of University policy, to be communicated to all its schools and external examiners.
69 External examiners repeatedly stated in their reports that the time made available to them to moderate students' work had been inadequate (see above, paragraph 65). It appears that, at best, work for moderation from Cork College was available to external examiners for scrutiny and comment only one day before a board of examiners formally passes judgement on it. More generally, external examiners stated in their reports that, given the large range of modules and papers they were expected to cover, they were able to give no more than limited attention to the assessed work and examination scripts of franchise-based students in the time allotted for this purpose. The audit team was informed that the constraint which foreshortened the time available to complete examination board business was the timing of the award ceremonies. At the time of the visit, the University had extended the period for marking and moderating assessments by one week and was anticipating that DQAC reports early in the coming session would allow it to assess the adequacy of this measure (see below, paragraph 72). The University subsequently informed the team that a 'wide-ranging consultation on changes to the academic year to meet the current time-pressures and confirm the security of the assessment process' was due to report to Academic Board in December 1999.
70 In general the reports of the external examiners for the parent programmes of the Portobello College and Cork College franchised schemes are supportive, and on several occasions the quality of work produced by both Portobello and Cork students had been commended. It was evident that the University's external examiners had served the University well in safeguarding the standards of its awards by submitting thorough reports, albeit under difficult circumstances. Unless decisive action is taken to address its external examiners' concerns in respect of the time allowed for the moderation of students' work, however, the effectiveness of the University's assessment arrangements will be open to question.
71 External examiners' reports are addressed to the University's Registrar and copied to the head of the relevant school. The audit team was told that the Registrar may identify a need for responses to reports on particular matters and communicate that a response is expected to the head of the school in question and that the Chair of the QAC was provided with copies of such communications. The University subsequently stated that both the Registrar and the Chair of the QAC received and read all external examiners' reports and that the Vice-Chancellor received all external examiners' reports and a summary of the action taken in response to them. For external examiners' reports, other than those noted by the Registrar, the team was told that the form of response to the external examiner was a matter for the head of school. The University expects action on points raised in external examiners' reports to be tracked through the system for annual monitoring (see above, paragraph 39 et seq); such responses are monitored by the school-level DQAC. The team was initially told that the University intended to introduce a formal and automatic process for response to external examiners into its quality assurance system, from the current year. The University subsequently informed the team that this arrangement had been in operation at the time of the audit, a fact of which members of the University had appeared to be unaware at the visit.
72 The Chair of QAC and the Registrar prepare an annual review report on the reports of the University's external examiners for the Academic Board. The QAC report for 1997-98 referred to some of the difficulties identified (see above, paragraphs 69-70) and included a request to DQACs that they audit the effectiveness of extending the period for moderation and marking by one week.
73 Copies of reports from external examiners are routinely supplied to the staff responsible for managing the franchised schemes in Portobello College and Cork College. At Cork, however, the Diploma Co-ordinator stated that such reports were not then distributed to staff, or discussed at Cork-based award management boards, and he was unaware of University processes for dealing with external examiners' reports. At Portobello College, external examiners' reports are copied to all members of the teaching staff and are bound into the annual scheme monitoring reports, which are typically sent to the University in November. This might be an isolated instance, a fact that the University will wish to confirm for itself. The University might also wish to clarify for its partners how external examiners' reports might be used to encourage improvements in quality and standards.
74 The Overview makes no reference to the University's confidence in the standards of awards in each of the franchised schemes The Portobello Commentary claims that standards achieved by students at the College are in line with the standards achieved by University-based students. The Cork Commentary compares results rather than standards noting that, despite a slightly higher failure rate among the Cork-based students, the comparative pass rates for Cork and the University do not appear to demonstrate any specific trend. The audit team's scrutiny of assessment and moderation arrangements for the Cork franchise and (to a lesser extent) those for the Portobello franchise, suggested that moderation between markers in the franchise centres and internal markers at the University might be constrained by the time available. Should that be the case, and should the time constraints acting on its external examiners prevent them from compensating for any deficiencies in internal assessment arrangements, the University's confidence that the academic standards of its awards attained through franchise-based study were being safeguarded by its present assessment procedures would be open to question.
The learning environments for the franchised routes
75 The University's Overview states that it is its policy to ensure that conditions are equal or equivalent for students of a scheme, wherever it is located.
76 The University considers that the measures it takes to assure itself that staff teaching on its franchised schemes are appropriately qualified constitutes one of the ways in which it can maintain the academic standards of the schemes, and the resulting awards (see above, paragraph 54). Additionally, staff teaching each of the franchised schemes provide a substantial part of the learning environment supporting the franchises. The audit team was able to confirm that scrutiny of staff CVs formed part of the initial validation process for the Dip HE franchised to Cork College.
77 The Overview states that before a new member of staff may be assigned to teach on one of the franchised schemes, his or her CVs is submitted to the relevant school for approval. The arrangements followed by the University to approve teaching staff at Cork College at the initial validation appeared to have been soundly based; arrangements for approving changes in staffing after initial validation seemed less secure, however. Changes in staffing arrangements at Cork since the beginning of the programme have amounted to two new staff, but notification of each staffing change, together with the CVs for each individual, had been made to the University-based Scheme Co-ordinator only after the event.
78 At Portobello College only one new member of staff had joined the programme since its inception. As at Cork, a CV had been supplied to the University by the College. The College-based Co-ordinator for the franchised scheme had assumed that since no objection had been made, the proposed member of staff had been acceptable to the University. This arrangement was confirmed by staff at the University. The audit team was unable to see how this post hoc process enabled the University to satisfy itself that only appropriate staff in its partner institutions were employed in the delivery of its franchised schemes.
79 Though the University did not draw explicit attention to the role of staff development arrangements in securing the standards of the franchised schemes, it appeared to the audit team that school-level staff development support had been important and effective in the early stages of the partnerships. Both the Cork Commentary and the Portobello Commentary referred to the contribution of University staff to the development of the programmes in the partner Colleges. At Portobello the frequency and numbers of staff exchanges with the University has lessened over time. At Cork the pattern has been different, in that fewer University staff have visited the College, but the visits have been sustained over time. It is significant that the Cork Commentary notes some communication difficulties at the level of module leaders that do not seem to have affected Portobello: different approaches to staff exchange may in part explain these facts. The team was given no information about the ways in which the University prepared its own personnel to undertake their roles in the management of the partnership.
80 The 1996 HEQC report noted conflicting evidence of the intensity and character of the scrutiny devoted by University validation and franchise panels to the learning resources of prospective partner institutions, and the University was recommended to 'ensure that staff with specialist expertise in resulting matters, such as staff of the University's Learning Resources and Information Technology Centres, [were] involved more closely in the validation process'. It was not clear from the University's papers whether this newly-introduced provision also applied to periodic and institutional reviews.
81 At the time of the QAA visit to the College there was no library at Cork College for general use, and the audit team was given to understand that for most purposes, students were expected to use the City Library. Students who had transferred to the University from Cork College of Commerce stated that the library resources available to them at Cork College in 1997-98 had not been adequate for their needs. The University considers that the quality assurance arrangements it has employed in developing its link with Cork College remain typical of its present procedures; should this be so, the adequacy of the University's annual monitoring and periodic review procedures is open to question. This matter is referred to elsewhere in this report (see above, paragraphs 44 and 45).
Internal and external communications
Academic and administrative links
82 Arrangements to maintain academic links between the partners are built into the formal agreements between the partners. Roles are specified in relation to the partnership for scheme and module leaders at the University, and for their counterparts in partner institutions. The audit team was informed that these links were sustained through regular contacts between academics over matters required by the agreements, such as the scheme leader's approval for variations to agreed assessments, and in the course of the routine maintenance and administration of modules, such as moderation of marks. The team was told that cross-membership of boards of studies had been specified at validation, and that partner institutions sent representatives to assessment boards at the University. In the case of the schemes franchised to Portobello College in 1991, the report of the VRC to the Polytechnic's Academic Board makes no mention of cross-membership of committees. Whilst the formal agreements made no requirement for visits to the partner institution by teaching staff from the University, such visits, for the purposes of staff development, were stated by the University to have been frequent, especially in the early stages of the partnerships (see above, paragraph 79).
83 Administrative links between the University and partner institutions are sustained by officers, such as the franchise officers and the Business School's Franchise Quality Support Co-ordinator, appointed from the teaching staff of the School, who have responsibilities for the support of programmes in franchise partners. It was the view of the University that regular visits by such teaching and administrative staff were an important means by which information could be guaranteed to flow from the partner back to the University, and vice versa.
84 Communications arrangements between the School of the Built Environment and Cork College chiefly depend on the contact between individual lecturers at the two institutions. The audit team was told that changes in staffing at the University had, on occasion, left a Cork-based lecturer without a source of advice and guidance.
85 The right of membership of the University's scheme boards of management is only exceptionally exercised by staff or students at Cork or Portobello (though both send members of staff to award and field examination boards). Notwithstanding the arrangements made by the School of the Built Environment to schedule meetings of scheme boards to coincide with visits by students from Cork, students at the University's partner Colleges in Ireland were unaware that they had right of membership of such boards, and staff at the University confirmed that they had not formally been invited to attend.
Communications between the partners
86 The School of the Built Environment and the Business School appeared to differ in the extent to which they maintained face-to-face contact with their partner institutions. The formal agreements provided for University membership of the (subsidiary) scheme management boards in the partner institutions. The University-based leader for the Dip HE scheme at Cork College appeared to visit the College regularly, at least once each semester, but there was no record of recent attendance by Business School staff at the Portobello-based scheme board.
87 Senior members of the Business School stated that they had visited Portobello College during the previous year, and asserted that there had been five or six visits to the College during the previous two years, each visit involving two academic staff. Unfortunately, none of the seven members of the staff of the Business School directly concerned with the scheme franchised to Portobello had been amongst those who had visited Portobello in the period. They stated, however, that the School's Franchise Quality Support Co-ordinator visited Portobello at least once annually, although the Franchise Quality Support Co-ordinator subsequently informed the audit team that she had not visited the College during the previous two sessions. Nevertheless, whilst some of the University's claims for the frequency and character of its communications with its partner institutions were difficult to substantiate, the University stated that several visits to Portobello College had been made by administrative staff during the 1998-99 session, and it was reasonably clear that in most cases there were strong links, if maintained remotely, between individual staff responsible for the delivery of the same module in the University and its partner institutions. The University may wish to consider how opportunities provided by changing communications technologies might be reflected in its quality assurance arrangements.
88 The University states that it maintains close control over all information and publicity referring to franchise operations. Partner colleges are required to ensure that when reference is made to University of Glamorgan awards in the press, or elsewhere in the media, the University's ownership of the awards must be clearly stated. The format and style of any advertising or publicity material relating to University awards must be agreed by the University's Head of Marketing and Student Recruitment prior to submission for publication. The bulk of the formal documentation describing the operation of any programme in the franchise partner is provided by the University itself, though it is sometimes customised to refer to local practices, or agreed variations. There is no evidence to suggest that the University's arrangements to protect its name in this way are other than effective.
89 The partnerships between the University of Glamorgan and Portobello College, Dublin, and Cork College of Commerce developed from initiatives in the University's Business School and its School of the Built Environment, respectively. Whilst the establishment of each partnership, in 1991 and 1992, was not governed by an explicit University strategy for overseas collaboration, both have served to implement the University's objectives of promoting 'access to learning opportunities nationally and internationally' to a range of students including those who 'would not otherwise enter higher education'.
90 The partnership between the University and Portobello College appears to have enabled more than 1,000 students, based in Dublin, to follow franchised schemes leading to University awards in business subjects. The partnership between the University and Cork College has not only provided a unique professional qualification to the College's students, but opened a route for progression from Cork to the University of Glamorgan. In addition, the University's association with its partners in Ireland has provided considerable development opportunities for the staff of the latter. Particularly at the outset, developmental work undertaken by University staff, focused on introducing colleagues in Ireland to the University's teaching and assessment techniques, appears to have been both extensive and effective. This was particularly marked in the case of the link between the University's Business School and Portobello College. These arrangements have been to the benefit of the students enrolled on the University's programmes in Dublin and Cork, who are warmly appreciative of the teaching and learning opportunities offered to them.
91 The strengths of the partnerships between the University's Schools and its partner Colleges in Ireland are, however, undermined by weaknesses in arrangements at University level. This imbalance was reflected in the three Commentaries provided by the University to describe the partnerships. The Commentaries devoted to the links with Portobello College and Cork College, apparently provided by the relevant Schools, were relatively informative and partly self-critical. The centrally-compiled Overview, covering both links, lacked evaluation, however, it described current arrangements without indicating how or why they had changed from the arrangements in place when the links were first approved, and provided an inadequate and inaccurate guide to the nature of the University's policy for overseas collaborations, and the ways in which these particular collaborations contributed to it.
92 The original University validation arrangements for the franchised schemes did not provide evidence that the requirements of the University or its predecessor had been met, particularly in matters relating to learning resources. Despite the longevity of the University's links with its partners in Ireland, and the fact that neither link was initiated in a way which meets the University's current requirements, review of the institutional level aspects of the links has been delayed. The University's current arrangements for such matters appears to be patchily understood by the members of the University-level Committee who met the audit team.
93 Annual monitoring of each of the franchised schemes, under the University's devolved quality assurance arrangements, has been implemented differently in each of its schools. The evidence yielded by annual monitoring appears to have given little regular information to the University about the academic well-being of the franchised schemes, or key developments in its partners' policies. Furthermore, the information generated by the existing monitoring arrangements does not appear to have been used to effect quality improvements: there is little evidence that the various reports and judgements made by the University have been fed back to its partner Colleges in Ireland, or that the University has made attempts to ensure that the lessons contained in such reports have been learned. The University is recommended to review its quality assurance arrangements in order to ensure that relevant and accurate information on the operation and development of its overseas partnerships flows from its schools to the committees and individuals responsible at University level.
94 Throughout the audit, difficulties on the part of the Registry in providing individual documents and other items of information (not all of them significant) contributed to an impression that it was unable to provide reliable information on the University's collaborative provision. Should this be the case, it would hamper the University's ability to assure the quality of such provision. The University will therefore wish to review its systems for informing itself of enrolments at overseas partner institutions, and for storing and retrieving key information relating to its academic partnerships.
95 Students in the University's partner Colleges in Ireland are subject to the same assessment regime, examination boards, and external examiners as those registered for equivalent programmes in the University itself. There is no evidence to suggest that, with respect to these partnerships, the academic standards of the awards attained are any different from those attained by University-based students. Central University arrangements for the management of assessments and examination boards may, however, have created difficulties for the internal moderation of assessments produced in Ireland. The ability of external examiners to achieve a proper grasp of the achievements of Ireland-based students is also apparently limited by the University's procedures, and by conflicting information on the University's requirements of them. External examiners' reports, which in many cases are admirably full, have drawn this to the attention of the University on several occasions. The University's quality assurance arrangements provide insufficiently reliable information for it to be completely confident that its academic standards will continue to be maintained, possibly as a result of its own procedural limitations. The effectiveness of the University's arrangements for the moderation of assessments from partner institutions by internal and external examiners should be reviewed and enhanced as soon as possible.
The University of Glamorgan welcomes the report of its collaborative arrangements in Ireland. The University is delighted that the team was able to endorse the real opportunities its partnerships with Portobello College and the College of Commerce have provided for their many students since the early 1990s, and the standards they have maintained. In particular, as the report makes evident, the collaborations are sustained in good health by the commitment and hard work of the staff 'on the ground' and by the close and friendly relations maintained between the University and its partners over the years.
Three years ago, the University took the bold step to re-construct its quality processes on a devolved model. It did this because its previous, successful but highly-centralised and controlled system was resulting, over the years, in quality becoming the business of a few experts and divorced from the process of delivery. Too few members of the academic community were gaining an understanding of or taking responsibility for quality assurance. The University undertook this move not without much debate and some trepidation, as leaving it potentially open to misunderstanding, not least in the implications of devolution for levels of information routinely scrutinised at University level.
At the same time, the University developed its current policy of mainstreaming all its provision. All students on courses which carry the University's credits (whether taster modules to associate students in the community, franchise arrangements with partner Colleges in Wales, or overseas collaborations) are subject to the same regulations, pass through the same approval mechanisms, and are assessed and monitored through the same assessment boards as campus-based students.
The University recognises that many of the points which concerned the audit team arose from the inevitable teething problems as a new and very different system was gradually bedded into accepted institutional processes. Amendments and adjustments have to be made as the system is tried and tested in practice, and in this context, it is particularly helpful to have the outside perspective offered by the audit process. A number of the team's concerns appear to have arisen from expectations that what was done at a central level under the former system should still be duplicated centrally in a devolved system.
Despite the teething troubles, however, the University believes that it is right in principle to pursue the creation of a quality management system which is widely owned by the community and which makes no discrimination in its handling of its students, whatever the level, or mode or place of their study.
The University nevertheless appreciates the appropriateness of the comments the team makes over its central arrangements and tracking systems. Since the audit, it has given serious consideration to the points for improvement suggested throughout the report and has acted to improve its processes in their light. It has strengthened the terms of its collaborative contracts to clarify the distribution of responsibilities and to include explicit mention of student welfare matters; acted to ensure that no further delay is occasioned in the institutional review of both Colleges involved in the Irish partnership; reviewed its annual monitoring procedures to ensure that full consideration is always given to its franchised provision, and enhanced its briefing and support for external examiners.
The University's comprehensive review of its academic structures has, since the audit, resulted in a decision to amend the pattern of the academic year in such a way as inter alia to address the team's very proper concerns about time pressure on the assessment process. It has re-organised its Student Information Department to improve its student tracking systems, and to ensure that records are up-to-date and accurate at all times. For the rather longer-term, the University is revising its internal communications to improve staff awareness of current and emerging policy and procedures.
In welcoming this report as a part of the on-going process of self-scrutiny, critical analysis and enhancement, the University trusts that a continuing dialogue between itself and QAA will serve further to development and support good practice and the quality of its provision.
Comments on the audit report supplied by University of Glamorgan
The University of Glamorgan welcomes the report of its collaborative arrangements
in Ireland. The University is delighted that the team was able to endorse
the real opportunities its partnerships with Portobello College and the
College of Commerce have provided for their many students since the early
1990s, and the standards they have maintained. In particular, as the report
makes evident, the collaborations are sustained in good health by the commitment
and hard work of the staff 'on the ground' and by the close and friendly
relations maintained between the University and its partners over the years.
Three years ago, the University took the bold step to re-construct its quality
processes on a devolved model. It did this because its previous, successful but
highly-centralised and controlled system was resulting, over the years, in quality
becoming the business of a few experts and divorced from the process of delivery.
Too few members of the academic community were gaining an understanding of or
taking responsibility for quality assurance. The University undertook this move
not without much debate and some trepidation, as leaving it potentially open
to misunderstanding, not least in the implications of devolution for levels of
information routinely scrutinised at University level.
At the same time, the University developed its current policy of mainstreaming
all its provision. All students on courses which carry the University's credits
(whether taster modules to associate students in the community, franchise arrangements
with partner Colleges in Wales, or overseas collaborations) are subject to the
same regulations, pass through the same approval mechanisms, and are assessed
and monitored through the same assessment boards as campus-based students.
The University recognises that many of the points which concerned the audit team
arose from the inevitable teething problems as a new and very different system
was gradually bedded into accepted institutional processes. Amendments and adjustments
have to be made as the system is tried and tested in practice, and in this context,
it is particularly helpful to have the outside perspective offered by the audit
process. A number of the team's concerns appear to have arisen from expectations
that what was done at a central level under the former system should still be
duplicated centrally in a devolved system.
Despite the teething troubles, however, the University believes that it is right
in principle to pursue the creation of a quality management system which is widely
owned by the community and which makes no discrimination in its handling of its
students, whatever the level, or mode or place of their study.
The University nevertheless appreciates the appropriateness of the comments the
team makes over its central arrangements and tracking systems. Since the audit,
it has given serious consideration to the points for improvement suggested throughout
the report and has acted to improve its processes in their light. It has strengthened
the terms of its collaborative contracts to clarify the distribution of responsibilities
and to include explicit mention of student welfare matters; acted to ensure that
no further delay is occasioned in the institutional review of both Colleges involved
in the Irish partnership; reviewed its annual monitoring procedures to ensure
that full consideration is always given to its franchised provision, and enhanced
its briefing and support for external examiners.
The University's comprehensive review of its academic structures has, since the
audit, resulted in a decision to amend the pattern of the academic year in such
a way as inter alia to address the team's very proper concerns about time pressure
on the assessment process. It has re-organised its Student Information Department
to improve its student tracking systems, and to ensure that records are up-to-date
and accurate at all times. For the rather longer-term, the University is revising
its internal communications to improve staff awareness of current and emerging
policy and procedures.
In welcoming this report as a part of the on-going process of self-scrutiny,
critical analysis and enhancement, the University trusts that a continuing dialogue
between itself and QAA will serve further to development and support good practice
and the quality of its provision.
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