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First Round Teaching and Learning Quality Process Review.1. The TLQPR Panel and the UGC were impressed with the Hong Kong Baptist University's goal of educating the whole person and with its success in achieving this goal. Small size provides significant quality-process benefits, which the University is utilizing to good advantage. Curricular design processes appear to be well organized, though perhaps somewhat over-centralized. Pedagogical design and implementation quality assurance are handled mainly through informal processes which, though currently effective, could fruitfully be made more systematic. University personnel were responsive to our requests for explanation and documentation and we are pleased that they carried these requests to the levels of faculties and departments in a meaningful and efficient way.
2. The terms of the TLQPR preclude any direct assessment of teaching and learning quality. However, the Panel is satisfied that sufficient improvement and assurance processes are in place and in prospect to warrant enthusiasm about the University's delivered quality of teaching and learning. But as stated in paragraph 16, the Panel believes that the University should clarify the devolution of responsibility for pedagogical design and provide more systematic follow-up with respect to all aspects of teaching and learning quality. The last section of the report describes some specific areas for improvement as identified by the Panel.
3. Annex A presents a framework for the Teaching and Learning Quality Process Review. As described in paragraph 2 of the framework, the goals of the TLQPR are:
| (a) | to focus attention on teaching and learning as the primary mission of Hong Kong's tertiary institutions; |
| (b) | to assist institutions in their efforts to improve the quality of teaching and learning; and |
| (c) | to enable the UGC and the institutions to discharge their obligation to maintain accountability for the quality of teaching and learning. |
The Panel focused on the following five teaching and learning process elements, which should exist in some form at every academic programme level:
Readers may wish to consult Annex A, which illustrates the kinds of questions used to define each process element, before proceeding further.
4. The Panel noted the following HKBU initiatives as enhancing teaching and learning quality :
As noted later, we believe these initiatives should be continued and strengthened as part of the broader quality programme recommended herein.
5. In November 1995 the University, at the request of the UGC, submitted an outline of its TLQPR document. Following the Panel's acceptance of the outline, the University submitted, in December 1995, its full twenty-page document describing its quality improvement and assurance processes. Subsequently, at the request of the Panel, the University submitted a supplementary document (together with a wealth of supporting documentation) relating its QA process to the five sub-processes outlined in paragraph 8 of Annex A. (Copies of both of these documents can be obtained from the University.)
6. The Panel held a discussion session with a cross-section of academic staff and students of the University in January 1996. At this session the purposes and methods of the Review were outlined and explained. The Panel's formal Review Visit took place on 9-10 April 1996 and followed the pattern described in paragraph 3 of Annex A.
7. The University provided the Panel with a description and self-assessment of its teaching and learning quality processes. The self-assessment was written before the Panel's visit. The main body of this document is provided at Annex B. The questions within each heading of Annex B were drawn by the institution from the "TLQPR Framework" at Annex A. The Panel found these materials to provide a useful framework for understanding quality assurance and improvement at Baptist University.
8. During the Panel's visit to the University on 9-10 April 1996, Panel subgroups visited twelve academic units in addition to holding plenary meetings with institutional leaders, academic staff with specific responsibility for quality, and students. Our conversations revolved around several underlying themes: (a) do colleagues have a degree of agreement and a sense of collective responsibility concerning their academic discipline and teaching quality; (b) how do they relate to one another in collegial terms; (c) how do they relate to their students as recipients of their services and as future colleagues; (d) how do they relate to the changing needs and demands of the larger university environment and of society?
9. From the subgroup conversations, we were able to detect certain tensions which have significant impact on teaching quality: tensions between centre and department, between teaching and research, between formal and informal channels of communication and practice, and between established traditions/cultures and new policy demands.
10. Annex C records our main observations arising from the subgroup visits and conversations. These observations are drawn from the reports from the Panel subgroups as a whole during and after the visit. Because the material is not based on formal reviews at the unit level, the observations are intended to be illustrative only. (That is why they have been placed in an appendix.) The units are not identified except for the Centre for Educational Development (CED), which we felt should be identified because of its special nature and importance to the University's teaching and learning programmes.
11. The Panel notes that changes in Hong Kong's overall higher education environment (i.e., the dramatic recent increase in participation rates and attendant change in student characteristics), an increasing degree of career- orientation on the part of students, and the decentralized character of academic institutions are putting great pressures on faculties and departments.
12. The issues illustrated in Annex C should not be viewed as criticisms of the individual operating units. The Panel is convinced that the illustrations are representative on average, but given the brief nature of the unit-level reviews we cannot vouch for the accuracy of all the details. The issues should be addressed by the University as a whole institution. Therefore, it would serve no useful purpose to focus commentary primarily on the individual units.
13. The Panel's general impression about teaching and learning quality in the Baptist University is positive. Staff appear to be enthusiastic about their teaching job and care about the quality of education their students are getting. The students we met were articulate and thoughtful. Feedback between students and staff appeared good, and it is taken seriously by staff. We noted some efforts to obtain feedback from constituencies outside the University, though except for the External Examiner System these efforts have yet to reach full maturity.
14. Staff are committed to teaching. Discussion takes place on pedagogical issues and many creative and innovative teaching and learning methods have been introduced. However, we feel that these discussions could benefit from being more systematized. The same is true for issues pertaining to implementation quality and assessment. The University is doing a good job in these areas but, as stated below, we want to ensure that the current high level of performance is maintained and continuously improved in the years to come.
15. The Panel recommends that processes for the review and improvement of pedagogical design and implementation quality should be made more systematic. The University relies almost exclusively on informal processes. As one Panel member observed, "It's not clear who's responsible for quality, though everyone cares about it." However, the University pays a price for the informality. For example, concerns about quality tend to be reactive—focusing on complaints—rather than planfully proactive. Moreover, quality-oriented organizational learning lags, and quality variations among schools and departments tend to persist rather than becoming subjects for remediation. The problem may grow as student needs evolve, information technology becomes more important in the teaching programme, and the University's research programme matures.
16. Implementing the above recommendation could begin by asking departments and staff to develop specific action objectives for improving pedagogical design and assuring implementation quality. University and faculty leaders would: (a) work with departments to clarify who is responsible for achieving the objectives; and (b) follow up to assess performance. The new processes need not be particularly formal. In fact, the Panel coined the term "systematic informality" to describe how the processes should work given Baptist University's small size and collegial environment. The important thing is to provide clarity and follow-up—the attributes most often lacking in unsystematic informal processes.
17. The second area for improvement involves increasing the usefulness and credibility of the student teaching evaluation questionnaires. The Panel supports mandatory questionnaires, and we agree that maintaining a common set of core questions is important for comparability across departments and over time. However, the University might remind departments and staff that adding questions specific to the subject matter is not only permissible, but encouraged. Perhaps even more important, feedback should be provided to students about the uses to which the questionnaires are put. Examples of how the survey results produced improvements should be provided where this can be done without breaching confidentiality. Without such feedback one risks a vicious circle: students' interest wanes because they don't see their input providing results, which causes staff to take the surveys less seriously, which further reduces the quality of the data, etc.
18. The third area for improvement involves the external examiner system. It seemed to the Panel that the system is being applied on a rather ad hoc basis, and that this should be corrected or a new system instituted. In particular, the procedure for selecting examiners might be scrutinized to ensure uniform high quality and comparability across subjects. More detailed guidelines and follow- up on the quality of examiners' reports and their implementation by departments and programmes might also be provided. Alternatively, a system of departmental visiting committees, with central review and follow-up, might replace the single person external examiner system.
19. The final area of improvement involves the Centre for Educational Development (CED). While there is no need to reiterate what we have written in Annex C, we want to emphasize the importance of the Centre's activities to the University's overall teaching and learning quality programme. It seems to us that it should provide diagnostic as well as technical assistance services, and that these services should be widely used by staff. For example, deans and chairs might encourage good teachers to use the Centre in order to become great teachers—and in the process help transfer their own experience to colleagues.
20. The preceding paragraphs sum up the Panel's views about teaching and learning quality at Baptist University. We believe that the University's current processes deliver a high-quality whole-person education. We also believe that becoming more self-conscious and systematic with regard to quality can lead to even better quality. We offer these suggestions in the spirit of helping Baptist to be the best it can be.
UGC Secretariat
January 1997
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First Round Teaching and Learning Quality Process Review.