TOOLKIT 3

THE QUALITY ENVIRONMENT

1 About this toolkit

This toolkit can be used by those who are responsible for key committees throughout your school and college, and for ensuring that the school is playing its part in the university’s quality process. This might include school and college management, your Area of Study Conveners and senior students’ association officers.

It deals, broadly, with committees other than SSLCs (which are dealt with in toolkit 2) such as School Teaching and Learning Committee, School Executive or College Teaching and Learning Committee; and with the wider quality and review environment in the university and wider sector.

It aims to help you:

1.  Reflect on the impact of committees on the student experience

2.  Consider how to improve and maximise student participation in committees

1.  Consider the role played by students in internal teaching reviews

2.  Consider the role your school can play in shaping the university’s approach to external review

2 The impact of committees

As a group, brainstorm the names of committees that exist within your school and college, apart from SSLCs. Jot down a few words next to each one that summarises its role.

Next, mark each committee next to the area or areas of the student learning experience on the diagram below which you think it impacts upon.

Where you feel a committee impacts on one or more of the areas above, it is important that the student view is at the heart of the committee’s business. How many examples can you think of when deliberations in such committees have been directly shaped by student views? How many of these committees have student members?

3 Ideas for enhancing student engagement

More than just having student places on relevant school and college committees, it is important that opportunities are taken up and students regularly and fully engage in the discussions of the committee.

Consider the following activities, and tick the relevant box:

We do it well / We do it but could improve / We don’t do it but could / We don’t do it and won’t do
Student members are elected or appointed in an open, informed and participative manner
Student members receive an induction with the chair and clerk to discuss the committee’s work and past minutes
More than one student member exists, to ensure mutual support or attendance if one is absent
A proforma is used for students to submit reports if they cannot make the meeting
The chair regularly meets with the student member to discuss issues between meetings
The student member is confident that they can communicate with their peers to get views between meetings
Class reps are regularly gathered together informally to be a sounding board and submit their views on key forthcoming committee business
There is some form of reward, accreditation or certification for student members in return for their time, effort and input
Student members sometimes co-chair meetings
Student members regularly submit items or papers for discussion

4 Engaging students in external reviews

Using both internal and external review to assist institutions to improve what they do, is at the heart of the quality enhancement process in Scottish higher education.

Every five years, every institution is reviewed by a team – including one current or recent student – from other institutions around the UK, to ensure that the quality enhancement activities within the institution are working effectively. This process is led by the Quality Assurance

Agency for Higher Education (QAA) and is called “Enhancement-Led Institutional Review” (ELIR). There is more about ELIR on the QAA website at:

http://www.qaa.ac.uk/reviews/ELIR/default.asp

The University of Aberdeen will undergo ELIR in 2009-10. What do you know about your school’s role in preparing for this?

Student engagement in preparation – the university will have been involving students and student representatives in the work leading up to the review, such as surveying opinion, collating information for the Reflective Analysis, and helping to identify strengths and weaknesses. What students have been involved in this from your school? How much of this involvement has been reported back to the school for your information or comment?

Contribution to the review – the review team will study student views of their learning, both in the format of student surveys and also by meeting with groups of students. In working with the university and students’ association in preparation for this, there are ways of predicting key issues and thus being able to demonstrate awareness and potential responses the school might take. A number of tools could be considered:

1.  Focus groups – consider running focus groups of your students, to gauge views about the key comments students have on their learning in the school. For more information about possible ways of running focus groups, see toolkit 2.

2.  Surveys – to get a snapshot of the student view across the school,

3.  Class discussions – allowing students to share ideas and perspectives on what they feel about their learning, with both each other and tutors. Asking students what they would keep, change remove or add to the learning experience is a good way of exploring both the positive and negative aspects.

5 Engaging students in your forthcoming ITR

Meanwhile, each higher education institution in Scotland has to conduct a review of every area of its own curriculum within a cycle of a certain number of years. Each review is undertaken by a team of staff and a student from other subject areas in the university. There is a guidance note for students on this process, which in Aberdeen is called “Internal Teaching Review” (ITR), on the university’s website at:

http://www.abdn.ac.uk/registry/quality/appendix3x10.pdf

If your school, or subject areas within it, are facing an internal teaching review, students in your school will be at the heart of the process.

This involvement is certainly going to be through the review team meeting a number of students, including class reps, to ask for their views on the learning experience and how they are involved in giving their views and feedback.

But also, a school could very usefully involve students in the preparation of the documentary evidence that each school has to provide. These submissions will include course materials, information on the school’s committee structure and quality processes, and evidence of improvements that have been made over the year, not least in response to student feedback. Students can have useful perspectives to bring about the best way to gather and present this information.

Think about the following activities:

1.  Include one or two student representatives, perhaps including the relevant Area of Study Convener, in your school’s sub-committee or working group that oversees the preparation for the ITR. Involve them in decisions and discussions fully, especially early on when the school’s approach to preparation will be discussed. While much of the planning phase will be of a dry and technical nature, you might find student contributions to be particularly valuable when deciding the best means of surveying and collating the student opinion.

2.  Convene some student focus groups before you begin assembling evidence. Ask students for views about their learning experience, and use their comments to inform the data on student views that you present, and to help you identify the overall themes in your learning and teaching. Consider asking a staff member or student from outside the subject area to facilitate the focus group, allowing for some independence and impartiality in the way that views are gathered.

3.  Conduct a detailed survey or meeting with your school’s class reps, asking them to give their views on the likely areas of strength and weakness in the subject area’s learning and teaching.

4.  Once students have been identified to meet the review panel, brief them so they know what is happening. Consider conducting a mock review panel meeting to ask them the likely questions and help them think through the issues.

5.  Where the panel will specifically be meeting class reps, brief the class reps beforehand on the likely questions. Ensure they are aware of some examples of how student feedback has been acted upon in the past.

2