1.        This document serves as a progress report of the ongoing changes that have occurred within the University in regard to its teaching and learning processes during the interval since the April 1996 visit of the University Grants Committee (UGC) appointed Teaching and Learning Quality Process Review (TLQPR) Panel. There continues to be considerable appreciation by the University community of the value the Panel 's visit and subsequent report have brought to its own efforts to further improve teaching and learning quality within the Institution. This progress report focuses on the four areas highlighted in the TLQPR January 1997 report as needing attention/improvement and it follows the same order of listing as found in that report.

"Processes for the review and improvement of pedagogical design and implementation quality should be made more systematic" (TLQPR Report: Paragraphs 15 and 16)

2.        On the more formal side of pedagogical design and implementation, the University continues to sharpen and clarify the roles of certain Senate standing committees and their relationships to courses, students, and course teaching teams. The Course Accreditation and Review Committee (CARC) now invites representative students to attend its meetings when the course on which they are enrolled is reviewed under the systematic reaccreditation process in use. This ensures students' views are obtained not only on individual teachers and subjects (course modules), but also on the course programme as a whole and on any concerns they may have regarding the effectiveness of course design and delivery.

3.        A second formal body is the Academic and Professional Standards Committee (APSC), which is responsible for the ongoing monitoring processes concerning the quality of course delivery. APSC pays particular attention to comments from external examiners, consultants, student teaching evaluation results, and the grade distribution patterns found amongst different courses. Students have been added as full members of this committee from the 1997/98 academic year onwards. When any concerns about the quality of course delivery arise, they are referred to the course teaching team for action, with a follow-up response/report submitted to the APSC.

4.        On a somewhat less formal but systematic basis, the entire TLQPR Report has been widely discussed within the University to elicit comments and suggestions of how the appropriate improvements might best be made. On several occasions deans' opinions have been obtained. Likewise, inputs from department heads and course leaders have been gathered. Regular meetings with course leaders by the Academic Vice-President have taken up the areas for improvement in the TLQPR Report, along with focused discussions on two papers prepared by the Head of the Academic Quality Support office, namely: "Improving the Quality of Higher Education" (Appendix I) and "Assessment of Student Learning" (Appendix II). The former paper emphasises good course design, the importance of clear course aims, meaningful objectives, and the setting of expected learning outcomes, while the latter paper is concerned with assessment criteria and marking guidelines on courses. Course teams have been asked to review all assessment measures in order to assure they are in line with the aims, objectives, and level of study for every subject on a course. This assessment rationalisation process is still under way.

5.        The statement in the TLQPR Report (Paragraph 15) concerning one Panel member's observation that "It's not clear who's responsible for quality, though everyone cares about it," was received by the University as both puzzling and gratifying. Regarding the puzzling aspect, the University has very explicitly outlined to all academic colleagues that: the Senate is the ultimate quality assurance body; two of its standing committees (CARC and APSC) routinely carry out much of that mandate on its behalf; that an Academic Quality Support office provides information and coordination for these processes; and that a major responsibility of every teacher, course leader, department head, dean, and the Academic Vice-President is the assurance of teaching and learning quality. Hence, the initial puzzlement. On the other hand, there was some gratification in the Panel member's statement because he or she concluded that "everyone cares about" quality in the University.

6.        Upon wider reflection and consultation over the intervening months, there is now a likely explanation for the "its not clear who's responsible for quality" part of the observation. For the past 15 years the University has operated under a system of academic management that it adopted from the former United Kingdom polytechnic sector of the early 1980s. The system establishes course leaders and course boards alongside department heads and academic departments, each having delegated responsibilities. During the early years that the University was developing rapidly under its new position within the aegis of the UGC, the dual system permitted rapid introduction and development of courses by one set of entities (course leaders/course boards) and rapid build-up of staff teams, facilities, equipment, library holdings, and other academic support capabilities by the other set of entities (department heads/academic departments). Now that a period of consolidation has been entered into, this dual system works less well, particularly in the day-to-day management of courses, which includes the quality assurance responsibility. Course leaders/course boards are responsible for the curricular matters, while heads/departments are responsible for resource issues (including the all-important staff resource) to deliver courses. With this model, in some of the larger courses within the University, responsibility for different aspects of course quality are inappropriately divided.

7.        From September 1998 some of the courses within the University will operate within a consolidated academic management structure, with academic departments taking the responsibility for quality assurance that had previously been taken up by a separate course board. This simplified and consolidated quality assurance responsibility should remove the confusion in some quarters of the University about "who's responsible for quality."

8.        For the current academic year Teaching Development Grant allocations have begun to be made directly to department units rather than only to individuals' projects, in order to build up their teaching and learning resources and to place an emphasis on departments' responsibilities for quality attainment in these areas. Every department has been asked to nominate a teaching materials coordinator to help maintain a systematic build-up of teaching and learning materials and to encourage their uses for the enhancement of quality in the mission of the academic department.

9.        In the past year two seminars for department heads and deans have been organised to clarify the academic staff appraisal processes. In these, the value, methodology, and staff development follow-up activities for performance assessment type annual appraisal reviews were highlighted and discussed. Panels in each faculty/school have been created to review academic staff at the end of contracts and at times of review for substantiation or promotion, rather than leaving this function entirely to a university-wide panel as in the past. A sense of increased ownership of the staff performance process is noticeable amongst members of academic units throughout the University.

To improve "the usefulness and credibility of the student teaching evaluation questionnaires" (TLQPR Report: Paragraph 17)

10.        In the past three semester administrations of the teaching evaluation questionnaires, faculties/schools and departments have been requested to review the subject-specific questions for revision and enhancement of this portion of the questionnaire. They have also been encouraged to make suggestions for revising all of the common or core questions in order to increase their usefulness and the academic staff's ownership of the process.

11.        Department heads have been encouraged to find creative and non-threatening ways (to students and teachers) to share teaching evaluation results in their regular staff-student consultative meetings. It has been suggested that they could share overall department statistical data, or by years of study within a discipline, or the changes that have occurred within these broad statistical areas on a semester-by-semester basis, as well as to engage students in broader discussions of the process and the results. They are also encouraged to make themselves readily available to students for more specific and detailed feedback which could reveal needs for quality improvement.

12.        In the current academic year, facilitators are being designated/appointed in order to assist individual staff to develop strategies for the improvement of particular areas receiving lower performance ratings in the teaching evaluation exercise. Academic staff members are encouraged to make use of these facilitators on their own initiative and department heads are asked to refer their colleagues to them as a means of staff development.

13.        During the past 18 months, an article has been written for the campus newspaper Baptist Fax which stressed the importance of the student evaluation of teaching exercises, stating (especially to students) how the results are used to enhance teaching and learning within the University. A memo was written by the Academic Vice-President to all teaching staff encouraging them to sustain/renew their commitments to the teaching evaluation exercises and to assume greater ownership of the process.

14.        In the autumn of 1997, a project was begun to place the teaching evaluation questionnaire on-line for better administration and to achieve timely statistical feedback. A pilot test of this on-line system will be conducted in the spring semester of 1997/98 with a sizeable sampling of subjects and students. If successful, this will enable students to complete the exercise for an entire semester's list of enrolled subjects in one sitting, rather than completing a questionnaire for each separate subject which they attend and within a single one-week period, as presently conducted. Furthermore, this project is extending the student feedback processes within the University by the development of a home page template for each subject on offer. The home page will contain a hot link that enables two-way student-teacher communication at any time during the semester, including feedback on many of the same question areas as the formal end-of-subject teaching evaluation questionnaire.

To improve "the external examiner system" (TLQPR Report: Paragraph 18)

15.        Contrary to the comments in the TLQPR Report, the University's external examiner system was established and is applied not on an ad hoc basis but in a very systematic way. Statements on the nature and role, appointment procedures and responsibilities of external examiners have for many years been a part of the University's Manual of Academic Policies, Regulations and Procedures (Section VII, Chapter 2, pp 62-65), and all academic staff have been provided a copy of this manual.

16.        The University was reviewing the system prior to the TLQPR Panel visit, in light of internal debates and findings of studies conducted by the Higher Education Quality Council in the United Kingdom and, therefore, was pleased to receive additional practical advice from the Panel. On several occasions the matter of the efficacy of the traditional external examiner system (or opposed to a number of other options) have been discussed with course leaders, with the outcome that they generally expressed a preference for maintaining the present system, but with variations to reflect the emerging maturity of each separate course.

17.        At the heart of these variations is the degree of responsibility that different course teams are able and prepared to take in assuring the quality of their own courses in conjunction with the available options for external peer monitoring. For relatively young courses, a traditional external examiner system will be maintained. For courses that have been on offer over a number of years, have undergone re-accreditation exercises, and which have a stable complement of teaching staff, then a visiting panel system may be adopted. Course teams are required to apply to the APSC for approval to adopt the visiting panel approach, giving a detailed plan for how the quality of teaching and learning would be enhanced by this approach. There would then exist performance objectives against which the alternative approach could be measured.

18.        In addition to these developments, the University has communicated directly with external examiners concerning their need to provide better reports which address issues of quality in teaching and learning more explicitly. Steps have also been taken to sharpen the focus of the external examiner report by giving explicit attention in the report format to key academic performance areas. As a consequence, the external examiners' reports have improved significantly over the past two years and the submission rate is nearly 100%. Due to unsatisfactory performance of some external examiners in the recent past, the terms of appointment of some have been shortened or discontinued. In the TLQPR Report, mention was made of reviewing the procedures for selecting external examiners to "ensure uniform high quality and comparability across subjects", but this does not seem to be the root of the problem with poor performance on the part of some of them. Indeed, the procedures are very clear and only senior/experienced academics are selected, but this is no assurance of good performance as external examiners. The more proactively issued instructions concerning specific information required of them, however, does seem to be paying greater dividends in improving the quality of service of the external examiners.

To improve the Centre for Educational Development (TLQPR Report: Paragraph 19)

19.        About the time of the TLQPR Panel visit to the University in April 1996, a working group was appointed to consider the functions and structures of the Centre for Educational Development (CED). The final report of this working group was made in February 1997, just after the University received the TLQPR Report in January 1997. Recommendations of the working group were in line with those contained in the TLQPR Report, especially in regard to the narrowing of activities of CED to produce a greater focus on assisting teachers in their efforts to improve. The Centre now emphasises what has become their primary task: assisting good teachers to become great teachers and to then influence their colleagues to do likewise. From July 1997, the CED has been re-organised into three sections: Teaching Development, Teaching Support, and Academic Media Production.

20.        The Teaching Development Section caters for individuals' professional needs to become effective teachers initially (at the outset of their careers) and exceptional teachers as their careers mature. It offers opportunities for learning, practice, scholarship, and reflection opportunities on the attainment of teaching excellence. The Teaching Support Section provides various kinds of multimedia technical services and appropriate equipment in support of teaching activities. This Section is responsible for installation and maintenance of multimedia teaching support equipment in lecture/seminar rooms and theatres, as well as multimedia software/teaching-ware materials. The Academic Media Production Section assists teachers and departments in the design and development of various educational media which support teaching and learning.

21.        The CED has been quite active in organising training programmes for the improvement of staff teaching effectiveness. (Appendix III) lists some of the seminars, workshops, training camps, and other programmes organised since the beginning of the 1996/97 academic year. These sessions have been attended by a total of 330 academic staff, most (229) participating in 2 or more activities, 83 of whom joined in four or more sessions.

22.        In addition to teaching improvement programmes, the CED introduced a teaching diagnostic service earlier in the 1997/98 academic year. This service is based on the well tested Student Evaluation of Education Quality (SEED) programme developed by Professor Herbert Marsh of the University of Western Sydney. Following the use of questionnaires, teachers use specific teaching dimension booklets to learn how best to improve their teaching performance in these particular areas.

23.        A Teaching Development and Practice Room has been equipped and is now available through the CED for use by teaching staff. Teachers and teaching assistants are now using this facility with their classes. Video recordings of teaching-learning interactions are made to serve as a basis for teacher self-reflection and for analysis/advice by experienced teaching colleagues. Ideas and strategies for teaching enhancement can thus be developed.

24.        To assist in the process of aiding "good teachers" to become "great teachers", a CED Teaching and Learning Staff Fellowships programme is being developed in the academic year 1997/98. These Fellows will be provided resources that enable them to enhance their already strong teaching abilities and to serve as facilitators and mentors for younger colleagues in their faculties. Each year new Fellows will be selected which, over time, will result in many teachers having this experience and all disciplines being represented.

Conclusions

25.        In conclusion, much progress towards improving performance in the four areas referred to in the TLQPR Report has been made within the University. It should, however, be stressed that "progress" is just that; it is not the end of the story. Much remains to be done, especially in the more complex area of generating enthusiasm for programme participation (through CED or otherwise) in order to transform good teachers into great ones. In spite of this caveat, much progress has been observed along these lines as well.

26.        It might be informative to read this report in conjunction with the most recent Teaching Development Grants Report from the University, since a considerable portion of those funds have been allocated to make improvements in the four areas of concern to the TLQPR Panel. This approach will continue to be followed in the next triennium.

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