Preface
Quality Assurance of Overseas Collaborative Provision
The Higher Education Quality Council (HEQC) is a body owned by the universities, colleges and other higher education institutions in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1992 to contribute to the maintenance and improvement of the quality and standards of all higher educational provision far which these institutions are responsible, wherever and however this is offered to students. To this end, HEQC has undertaken 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, HEQC 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 British universities and colleges operating outside the UK.
The audit enquiries were assisted by the publication in December 1996 of HEQC’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. While UK institutions participating in the programme have not been ‘measured’against the Code, (which is not intended to be a definitive check list), their experience of using it, and the findings from the overseas visits in general, will contribute to its revision and further development.
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, involving a mix of partners from small, privately funded organisations to large, publicly funded universities.
This report is one of a number of reports published from the summer 1997 overseas audit programme. It should be read in conjunction with HEQC’s published audit report(s) on the UK university or college concerned, details of which can be found in this report.
1 This is a report of an audit carried out by the Higher Education Quality Council (HEQC), of the quality assurance arrangements for a collaborative partnership originally established between the University of Sunderland and the Foundation College/Unisund in Athens, for the purpose of offering taught postgraduate programmes of study leading to the University’s awards of MBA, MBA International Marketing, and MBA Quality Management, within the University’s portfolio of taught postgraduate programmes, known collectively as its International Graduate Programme (IGP).
2 This audit of the partnership arrangements between the University of Sunderland and the Foundation College/Unisund examined the policies and procedures used by the University to satisfy itself about the academic quality and standards of its awards being offered in Greece. It forms part of a series of audits of overseas collaborative partnerships undertaken in 1997.
3 The Council is grateful to the University of Sunderland and Unisund for their assistance and co-operation.
Abbreviations used in this report
4 In this report the following abbreviations are used:
1995 Report:
Quality Audit Report. University of Sunderland. HEQC, September 1995
1996 Report:
Quality Audit Report. University of Sunderland. Collaborative Provision.
HEQC, May 1996
The University:
University of Sunderland
The College:
The Foundation College/Unisund
SBS: Sunderland Business School
IGP: International Graduate Programme
MBA: Masters Degree in Business Administration
PAB: Programme Assessment Board
MAB: Module Assessment Board
5 Following initial discussions between the University and HEQC, the University provided HEQC with documentation describing the origin and development of its partnership with the Foundation College/Unisund in Athens. At a briefing meeting to discuss this material, the audit team proposed a programme of visits to the partner institutions in the UK and in Greece and sought additional contextual materials to extend its understanding of the structure and processes of the University’s quality assurance arrangements for this aspect of its overseas collaborative provision.
6 To prepare for the visit to the University’s partner in Greece, and to check its findings after its visit to Athens, the audit team held discussions with a range of individuals and groups at the University including the ProVice-Chancellor, Academic; the Head of the Quality Support Unit; the Director of the Sunderland Business School; the Director of the International Graduate Programme; the Programme Leader for Athens and teachers and administrators supporting the Athens provision from Sunderland. In Athens, the team met the Director of the Foundation College; the Partners managing Unisund; a member of Unisund’s administrative staff; and students following the International Graduate Programme in Athens. In all the team met more than 30 individuals, some on more than one occasion. A commentary on the audit provided by the University is appended to this report.
7 The audit team comprised Dr R M Allen, Professor A Gale and Mr A Jones, auditors, and Ms D Cerqua, audit secretary. Dr D W Cairns, Assistant Director, Quality Assurance Group, accompanied the team to Greece and co-ordinated the audit for HEQC.
The University context for collaborative
provision
Developments since the 1996 HEQC audit of the University's
collaborative provision
8 The University’s quality assurance arrangements for its collaborative provision were the subject of an HEQC Report in May 1996. At the time of the 1996 audit, there was some debate within the University whether programmes of study on which students were registered at an approved centre, provided with teaching materials devised by University staff, and supported by local tutors, could be considered to constitute collaborative activity. Reviewing the terms of this debate the Report recommended that the University might find it advisable to include such provision within the University’s ‘models for programme quality assurance’, and that it should review its procedures to determine whether the mechanisms used to approve such collaborations could be further strengthened.
9 In 1996, the University’s Academic Board agreed detailed guidelines on International Collaborative Taught Programmes: Planning and Operational Requirements. The University’s intention was to provide a checklist of requirements, particularly for staff involved in ‘first tine’activities; for example, where new partners were involved or where an established relationship was being changed or extended. The intended readership included staff involved in the planning and management of international collaborative programmes, and for their benefit the document set out the University’s requirements relating to planning, validation and approval, programme operation, and monitoring and review. A noteworthy inclusion was a requirement for all proposals for collaboration henceforth to include a risk assessment and a business plan. The audit team commends the work undertaken by the University to provide a clear and detailed framework for the introduction of new activities and particularly its decision that any further extensions of the MBA programme to other Centres would be carried out under these procedures.
10 At the time of the present audit, the University had developed comprehensive arrangements to assure the quality of its overseas collaborative provision, and was reviewing all arrangements made under its former procedures in the light of its growing experience of operating its new procedures. As one of several measures being introduced at this time, the University was about to establish a new central unit, headed by the Pro Vice-Chancellor, to enhance its capacity to co-ordinate and monitor its overseas partnerships. Notwithstanding the developments described above, the audit team was not sure that the University’s current partnership with the Foundation College/Unisund would be covered by these procedures.
The Foundation College and Unisund
11 The Foundation College was established in 1988 and claims to have been the first independent educational institution in Greece to offer a one year foundation course leading to entry to UK degree courses. Since then it has developed collaborative arrangements with a total of seven UK higher education institutions, in a range of subjects which include engineering, social sciences, biological sciences and humanities, as well as business and management. The College now claims to have the highest roll of students amongst all Greek institutions that prepare students for entry to UK degree courses.
12 In 1997, the Chief Executive of the Foundation College established a separate company, ‘Unisund’, for the purposes of supporting the University of Sunderland’s provision leading to its MBAs. Unisund has its own staff in Athens; uses two of the Foundation College’s sites and rents additional accommodation as necessary. It is the University’s view that staff at Unisund provide, ‘a continuous source of support to the students during the periods between tutor visits’, a view with which the audit team would not disagree. This support for the University’s work includes marketing and recruitment to its MBAs, provision of teaching and information technology facilities, pastoral support for students, and administrative support including arrangements for the collection and return of assignments.
13 The initial relationship between the Foundation College and the University of Sunderland came about as a consequence of the College’s contacts with the University in support of its main business as a provider of ‘foundation’or preparatory courses for Greek students wishing to study in the UK. Discussions about further collaboration led to the proposal that Athens should become a centre for the University’s MBAs.
Initial approval and validation process
14 The University first introduced an MBA programme in the late 1980s. In 1993, as part of a review of the programme’s operation, the Business School proposed its modification into a part of a larger modular taught postgraduate programme: the Modular Masters Scheme. At the time of the 1993 approval the University did not consider that the proposal to offer its MBA overseas using its own staff and locally-arranged accommodation fell within the scope of its procedures for approving overseas collaboration.
15 In July 1994 the Business School sought approval for the overseas delivery of its part-time MBA programme and other routes in the Modular Masters Scheme; for a change of name from ‘MSc Quality Management’to ‘MBA Quality Management’; and for approval that the programme should be delivered in Singapore and Malaysia with the support of local tutors. In seeking approval for delivery of these programmes overseas, the Business School was seeking to take advantage of what it perceived as a significant potential for the expansion of taught postgraduate business provision in Europe and across the Middle and Far East. The proposal was seen by the Business School as the first stage in a broader development of overseas MBA activity, within which ‘overseas delivery would mirror that of home delivery with certain enhancements’, principally the improvement and standardisation of the study guides provided to students to support their learning. The proposal was accompanied by detailed three year financial projections for the costs and benefits of operating in six overseas locations, including centres in Athens and Thessaloniki.
16 The Panel which scrutinised this proposal in 1994 was chaired by a senior member of the University from a different School, but the membership of the Panel did not include a peer from outside the University. The Panel recommended that the ProVice-Chancellor should approve the MBA proposals on condition that the submission documentation be reviewed against the University’s Open Learning Guidelines; that the existing module feedback mechanism for the MBA should be extended to overseas students; that further attention should be given to the assessment of work-based learning and that, since the proposed MBAs were to be delivered and assessed through the medium of English, further steps should be taken to measure the English language competence of students. The Panel concluded that it would be acceptable to delegate responsibility for the approval of additional study centres and locations to the Director of the Business School, subject to satisfactory reports following site visits to proposed overseas centres. The Panel recommended that amongst the items to be covered by such reports should be the availability of suitably qualified staff; the adequacy of teaching and learning facilities; and the availability of library facilities, including access to resources specifically required for the programme, comparable to those available within the University.
17 Reviewing the Panel’s discussions some three years later, it appeared to the audit team that the cultural contexts in Singapore, Jeddah, the Netherlands and Athens within which the MBA programme was to be delivered, and the background and expertise of the likely students at the various centres, might not have received sufficient attention from the Panel. The minutes of the Panel’s discussions confirmed that the University had viewed these instances of overseas delivery as the extension of the equivalent UK routes and modules to other ‘campuses’. It appeared to the team that a consequence of such an approach was that the University may have minimised the differences between domestic and overseas operations, including those with implications for the quality assurance of the programme.
18 The audit team was also surprised that the University had been willing to confer on the Business School the authority to expand the overseas operations of the MBA programme without further checks, notwithstanding that, at the time, the University was ‘developing more detailed procedures and processes for approval of overseas collaborative programmes.
19 Members of the University with whom the audit team discussed the initial approval of modules leading to its MBAs delivered from the Athens Centre, stated that these were not examples of supported distance learning, but the constituents of conventional mainstream University programmes, directly delivered and assessed by the University (without the assistance of local tutors), on an overseas campus, and that the modules were subject to the same quality assurance structures as identical academic provision delivered in Sunderland. However, members of the University were prepared to differentiate between the modules as delivered in Athens and the modules as delivered, for example, in Jeddah or the Netherlands. It seemed to the team that whilst members of the University could identify that some instances of such deliveries were more or less similar to one another, this awareness had yet to be translated into quality assurance arrangements for the programmes as a whole. The implications of this for the further development and the continuing monitoring of the programme is that at the time of the audit the University’s arrangements were not capable of allowing each of the centres, and its mode of delivery, to be monitored individually and as part of the programmes as a whole. However, there were welcome signs that the University, through its Business School, was beginning to address these matters (see below, paragraphs 35 and 36).
20 Students at the Athens Centre have yet to receive one of the University’s MBA awards. Accordingly, the form of the University’s intended degree certificate recording the award could only be seen in an example specially prepared for the audit team. This example clearly stated that the fictitious student had studied in Athens.
21 At the time of the audit, the University was contemplating the introduction of locally-based tutors, a development which, in the audit team’s view, would be likely to assist it to strike an appropriate balance between the needs of the modules and programmes it delivers in the UK and the needs of its overseas students. Such a development would, however, require the University to undertake a reassessment of its current approach to the quality assurance of the programme in Athens, which is currently based on the premise that all tutors are UK-based, and intimately familiar with the University’s administrative and other arrangements. The team noted that the University was mindful of the need to consider these matters (see below, paragraph 46).
Approval of the Athens Centre
22 Following earlier contacts with the Foundation College (see above, paragraph
13), staff of the Business School travelled to Athens to assess the suitability
of the administrative support staff and physical resources available to the College
to support the delivery of the MBAs. The pattern of delivery proposed and subsequently
followed was that on approximately one weekend in four, a team of tutors from
the University should fly from the UK to Athens to conduct seminars and give
tuition, using facilities provided initially by the Foundation College and subsequently
by its agent Unisund. A report on the teaching and learning facilities available
to the Foundation College in 1994 concluded that ‘appropriate local support
is available’, although the criteria of adequacy relied on by the visiting
staff from Sunderland and the formal procedures by which this report was dealt
with by the School and the University were not clear to the audit team.
23 More particularly, the audit team noted that previous extensions of the MBA to overseas locations had relied on the criterion that the library facilities available to the University’s MBA students overseas should be comparable to those available to equivalent students in the UK (see above, paragraph 16). The report of the staff visiting Athens to assess the suitability of the Foundation College as a partner commented that students would not have to call on the College’s facilities because they could have access to a number of major libraries based in Athens. From its discussions with students, it appeared to the team that this assessment had been based on an insufficiently rigorous appraisal of the practical availability of these facilities, particularly since the intended students would normally be in full-time employment. The team welcomed the University’s assurances that under its recently introduced quality assurance arrangements, the teaching and learning resources needed to support new academic provision would be subject to more rigorous scrutiny and invites the University to re-consider the sufficiency of the library facilities available to its students in Athens in the light of the above comments.
Formal agreement between the University and the
Foundation College
24 The University’s arrangement with the Foundation College for the latter to provide support for the University’s MBA programmes in Athens was concluded in early 1995. The agreement between the partners is set out in a ‘Memorandum of Agreement’signed by the Vice Chancellor of the University and the Chief Executive of the Foundation College, which reserves full authority for the quality assurance of the University’s provision and the standards of its awards to the latter’s Academic Board. Following the conclusion of this agreement, and for reasons of internal policy, the Foundation College established an entity, ‘Unisund’, to carry out its obligations under the Memorandum. Senior members of the Foundation College and Unisund told the audit team that the College and Unisund had in turn concluded a Memorandum, which established that the rights and obligations of the Foundation College under the Memorandum of Agreement with the University would be exercised by Unisund.
25 The University was forthright in drawing the attention of the audit team to the introduction of Unisund into its relations with its Greek partner, and was confident that its ability to monitor and direct the partnership had not been in any way diminished by this. However, the University appeared not to have been provided with a copy of the Memorandum between the Foundation College and Unisund. The University is aware of the need to update its formal agreement with the Foundation College, in order to clarify the duties and responsibilities of Unisund to the University and its students and to the Foundation College.
Monitoring and review arrangements
26 Executive responsibility for the MBAs within the IGP is vested in the Programme Director, who is responsible to the Dean of the Business School for its good order. The University has also appointed a Programme Leader to be responsible for liaison with Unisund and the detailed support of the Programme in Athens. The team of tutors delivering modules leading to the MBAs in Athens holds ad hoc meetings for administrative purposes, and to plan future developments and review progress.
27 In 1996, the University established a Board of Studies, chaired by the IGP Programme Director, to monitor the centres through which the constituent programmes of the IGP are delivered in the UK and overseas. At the time of the audit the Board’s operations were too recently established for the audit team to take a firm view on its likely efficacy. However it seemed to the team that the Board had the potential to monitor the activities of individual centres, thereby supporting cross-centre comparability and that its work should enhance the University’s capacity to monitor and coordinate the activities of individual tutors and teams of staff delivering modules within the IGP across several centres. The University is to be commended for this innovation.
28 Interest in the University’s MBAs is generated through advertising in the Greek press. Postal and telephone enquiries from within Greece are directed in the first instance to the offices of Unisund. Applicants are usually offered an opportunity to visit Unisund’s offices to discuss the curriculum and the University’s admission requirements. Since the programme in Athens is delivered and assessed entirely in English, this initial discussion with Unisund staff also provides potential students with an opportunity to demonstrate to the former their command of spoken and written English. Subsequently, applicants complete a formal University application which Unisund transmits to Sunderland. Formal and actual responsibility for admission to the programme resides with the University, although it was evident to the audit team that Unisund staff, themselves graduates of UK universities, made an important contribution to the process through offering potential students informed advice on the likely academic demands that would follow registration.
29 At the time of the audit the overall quality of the modules delivered in Athens was chiefly monitored through regular visits to the Athens Centre by the University’s IGP Programme Director and the Programme Leader for the Athens Centre, and by members of the teaching staff delivering modules. Students in Athens entering the IGP at the Certificate stage are provided with academic and personal advice and support through the arrangements detailed in the student handbook. Students progressing to the MBA are allocated a University-based personal tutor. Tutors provide advice, by fax, telephone and e-mail, and conduct personal interviews with their tutees when they are teaching in Athens. Students studying for the University’s awards in Athens normally provide feedback on their experiences of teaching and learning through such contacts with their tutors and via direct interviews with the Programme Director and the Programme Leader for the Athens Centre. Students told the audit team that these means of communication were working effectively.
30 The University expects all programme teams to gather student feedback by some formal means on individual modules and the programme as a whole. Members of the University told the audit team that in the context of a strongly team-based approach to the delivery of the constituent modules of the IGP, informal and ad hoc approaches to capturing feedback information were appropriate and effective. Whilst accepting that the teaching staff were using a variety of methods to acquire feedback information from students, it was not clear to the audit team that such information was being systematically used by the University to monitor the progress of its provision in Athens, and to enhance the quality of students’learning. Students attending the Athens Centre elect their own group representatives who provide an additional source of feedback information to the University.
Enhancements to the collection and analysis of
student feedback
31 The audit team was interested to learn that the Business School had recently developed a standardised questionnaire which it intended to administer annually to students following modules in its IGP, starting in the second semester of 1997. This welcome development is mentioned in the new IGP part-time Course Handbook, which notes that module and course feedback sheets are ‘an essential feature of quality monitoring’.
32 The audit team welcomed the University’s introduction of greater formality in its arrangements to gather feedback information from its international students. However, the team noted that the outcomes arising from the provision of such formal student feedback did not appear to be communicated to those who had provided the information originally. As it continues to strengthen its arrangements for gathering feedback information from its students in Athens, the University will wish to consider the desirability of ensuring that it has effective arrangements to alert its students in Athens and members of Unisund to its responses to the information they have provided.
33 The University considers that the ‘ongoing quality of the Programme is ensured through adherence to the University’s standard procedures for Quality Assurance and Enhancement’. This requires the production of a formal Annual Monitoring report by the IGP Director, which is scrutinised through the normal University processes. These measures are augmented by procedures for the assessment of students’work that replicate those for students elsewhere in the University (see below, paragraph 37).
34 Annual monitoring reports are considered by the Business School’s Quality Board, and a summary of matters of note is later presented to the University’s Quality Enhancement Board in order ‘to be able to assure the Academic Board of the academic health, the quality and integrity of the programme’. The annual report on the IGP for the session 1995-96, whilst noting that ‘annual course monitoring has not taken place formally as yet’, included a short summary of matters raised at the Athens Centre, including general concerns raised by the students and the University’s partners, and an action plan which, whilst thorough, related only to general IGP matters (see below, paragraph 38). In response to this report, the Programme Board had introduced improvements to the organisation of assessment and tutor support in Athens. The audit team welcomed this evidence of the University’s response to concerns raised in Athens, although the formal procedures through which the University had moved to give effect to its intentions, and the proposed action, were less clear.
35 As noted earlier (see above, paragraph 18) it seemed to the audit team that in developing this, and notionally similar instances of its overseas provision, members of the University had initially discounted the need to adapt its arrangements in each of its overseas centres to local conditions. The team was interested to note therefore, that the current view of the Business School’s Quality Board was that cultural issues in each of the overseas locations were significant determinants of the rate at which the IGP might expand. This suggested to the team that there had been an increase in awareness within the University of the importance of cultural factors in overseas collaborative activity. The team endorses the view of the School Quality Board that cultural differences between centres need to be reflected more strongly in the University’s monitoring and review processes.
36 In practical terms, the Business School has given effect to its appreciation of the importance of being able to scrutinise individual routes and overseas centres, by committing itself to identify individuals who will visit specific overseas locations which offer routes within the IGP, leading to individual awards. The remit of those undertaking such visits will be to make annual reports to the IGP Board of Studies, for locations and routes, on such matters as student satisfaction and relations with partners, clients, local tutors, other institutions, and employers. The audit team views this innovation as a necessary stage in the development of appropriate quality assurance processes for the University’s overseas IG? provision. The University will wish to consider the necessity of implementing these measures as a matter of urgency.
Academic standards and the assessment of students
37 In 1993, when approving the MBA programme for overseas delivery, the University considered that ‘the quality standard [of its award] is maintained by the setting and marking of all assessments in Sunderland’. In line with this policy, all work completed by students on the programme which is used to produce summative assessments is sent to Sunderland for marking. Marking is carried out by the designated module tutor and a sample of work is second marked within the University. A further sample of scripts is also sent for scrutiny and moderation by the relevant external examiner. The grades which result from this process of marking and internal and external moderation are considered by the relevant University Module Assessment Boards (MAB) before being sent to the IGP Programme Assessment Board (PAB). Graded assignments are returned to students with comments recorded on a standard feedback sheet. The nature, content, and assessment of individual modules within the IGP is subject to an annual review by the relevant Module Studies Boards within the Business School.
38 In late 1996 the IGP Board of Studies noted that the Athens Centre staff and students had expressed dissatisfaction with a number of assessment-related matters (see above, paragraph 34). Specifically, students considered that there had been a lack of clarity about the structure and schedule of assignments. Reviewing this matter, the IGP Board of Studies also noted that it had been difficult to process the results of IGP through Module Boards at the University and that a backlog had developed. The audit team found clear evidence that these difficulties had been effectively resolved by the University which had, for example, instituted clearer and firmer schedules for assignments. These measures were subsequently underpinned by sections in the newly produced Course Handbook, which provides detailed information for students on the submission and handling of assignments and emphasises the responsibility of students to meet assignment deadlines and to notify staff at the Athens Centre of problems.
39 The Manager of the Athens Centre is responsible for collecting assignments, certifying their timely submission and despatching them to Sunderland by courier. The Course Handbook sets out procedural notes stating the timescale within which students should expect to see their work marked and returned and the responsibilities of staff both in Athens and the UK together with the rules governing student conduct in assessment. It appeared to the audit team that the College’s administrative arrangements to support the University’s assessment procedures in Athens were working satisfactorily.
40 The titles of students’assignments are arranged with the active support of the relevant personal tutor. It is the tutor’s responsibility to liaise with the student throughout the process of determining titles for assignments, if necessary assisting them with the negotiations required to establish cross-module assignments, using the range of media described elsewhere (see above, paragraph 29).
External examiner arrangements
41 External examiners for modules within the IGP are appointed to be responsible for monitoring that provision wherever it is offered, and are not responsible for the work of particular centres. Arrangements for the nomination and appointment of external examiners are identical to those described in the 1995 Report (see paragraph 59 ff).
Operation of the IG Programme Assessment Board
42 All decisions on progression and recommendations for awards are made by the International Graduate Programme Assessment Board at Sunderland. Papers produced by this PAB were provided by the University in its briefing materials but the audit team was unable to discover to its satisfaction how decisions had been made. The outcomes of this particular instance of its assessment processes appeared to the team not to be available in a timely manner and in a form that would easily enable the University to assure itself that the performance of students in each of its overseas centres met its expectations and standards.
43 The audit team noted in one external examiner’s report, dated 1997, his surprise that he had recently been asked to examine scripts submitted in 1995. and his comments that he had had insufficient briefing on the grading scheme or general standards to be applied. The University subsequently represented to the team that this particular comment related to a request from the Business School to its external examiners that they should scrutinise a sample of assessments from IGP centres for calibration purposes, and that the external examiner in question had misunderstood what was required of him. Whatever the facts of the matter, the team considers that the University will need to satisfy itself that external examiners are adequately prepared to perform their roles, including monitoring the assessment process for both routes and individual centres within its overseas programmes, and the standards of the University’s award (see below), and that work intended for scrutiny and moderation by external examiners is submitted to them promptly.
44 Until late 1996, in keeping with its view that its Athens-based students were to be seen as part of its overall academic provision within the IGP, the University did not have the capacity to identify samples of marked work from particular centres and routes for quality assurance purposes (see above, paragraph 18). At that time the IGP Board of Studies put measures in hand to provide samples of scripts from particular centres and routes of the IGP for the scrutiny of the University’s external examiners. The recent introduction of these arrangements did not allow the audit team to see more than a limited sample of external examiners’comments relating to Athens-based IGP students and the team was therefore not in a position to offer a firm judgement on the University’s former arrangements for safeguarding the academic standards of its award. However, it appeared to the team that once the new arrangements described above had been established, and their effectiveness demonstrated, the University should be able to place more confidence in its capacity to assure the standard of its award.
Staffing and staff development
45 All tuition for modules within the IGP delivered in Athens is provided by the University’s UK-based staff. The University in Sunderland has recruited significant numbers of locally-based, Greek-speaking students over many years and, in consequence, is confident that its staff are able to identify and adapt to the cultural requirements of its students in Athens.
46 Several members of the teaching team delivering modules of IGP in Athens are fluent Greek speakers, including the Programme Leader, for whom Greek is his first language. It is the University’s current view that the mode of delivery it has adopted for its modules in Athens, together with the first-hand knowledge of a number of its staff of the Greek language and culture, ensures that the decision to deliver modules leading to its MBAs in Athens has brought with it no specific staff development needs, to add to those required by its staff generally. The audit team was given to understand, however, that the University and Unisund were currently exploring the possibility of recruiting locally-based tutors in Athens to provide more accessible support for the University’s students. Such a development would require the University to put in place continuing staff development arrangements for locally-based tutors, a prospect which it had anticipated and begun to prepare for (see above, paragraph 21).
Publicity and promotional materials
47 The University’s MBAs are promoted through specially designed promotional literature and advertised in the Greek press in English and Greek. All the promotional material is prepared by staff in the University and forwarded to Athens for local use. Other press copy involving the partnership is prepared in Athens in Greek and then sent to the University for approval prior to its use. In practice the text of the press advertisement which the University had approved when commencing delivery of modules leading to the MBAs in Athens continues to be used for this purpose.
Conclusions and further consideration
48 The University of Sunderland’s partner in Athens, the Foundation College, and its offshoot Unisund, have long-standing experience of collaboration with UK higher education institutions. Unisund takes the view that quality is assured by the retention of responsibility by UK institutions for the delivery of both undergraduate and postgraduate work. Unisund provides strong support for the activities of the University of Sunderland and its teaching staff in Athens, which is appreciated by students, and that there is a clear awareness on the part of senior members of the University of the extent and importance of this support. This combination of the delivery of the programme in Athens by UK-based University staff, and firm support by Unisund for the University’s students, has contributed to the apparent success with which the University’s provision has been delivered, and provides a sound base for the University’s operations in Athens.
49 There are currently a number of developments and proposals under consideration that would add to the quality assurance arrangements that the University has developed for its MBA, MBA International Marketing, and MBA Quality Management in Athens, within its International Graduate Programme, and would enhance the University’s capacity to assure the quality of its overseas provision and the standards of its awards. However, the stress laid by the University until recently on its view of its IGP as a single Program, leading to several awards through a variety of routes, and offered on a number of sites, has meant that the differences between locations and routes have not always been sufficiently acknowledged in the University’s quality assurance arrangements. Recent proposals to strengthen the University’s ability to monitor and Alan's the delivery of teaching and learning for individual canter, such as Athens, and individual routes to particular awards, are to be welcomed. If, in addition to these proposed developments, the University now also considers how its external examiners can be better placed to monitor and assure its assessment processes in specific canter, and for particular routes within the IMP, the University will be well placed to continue to assure effectively the standards of its awards.
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