Week 10: Quality assurance and our responsibilities: Helping guide your development: Module Overview
Watch the following video introducing this module.
Transcript [pdf, 137KB] Links to an external site.
In this module, you will gain an understanding of the overarching learning and teaching frameworks that assure the quality of Australia’s higher education providers, including your institution. We start by examining the overarching regulatory body TEQSA (Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency), whose role it is to safeguard the interests of students, as well as to accredit our programs and units. From January 2017, a new regulatory framework applies to all registered providers of higher education in Australia. The framework is known as the Higher Education Standards Framework (Commonwealth of Australia, 2015) and it describes a range of specifically developed threshold standards all institutions must meet.
Our responsibility as educators is to understand and comply with these requirements. A second important framework governing our institutions is the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) (AQF Council, 2013). This framework is the national policy for determining Australian qualifications in education.
Moving on from these overarching regulatory frameworks, we will then examine your institution’s related policies and procedures that help assure and enhance the quality of program learning and teaching. This will include understanding your role as an educator, and the impact of, for example, policies and guidelines relating to academic integrity and your institution’s code of conduct. Another important consideration is collecting and examining different datasets to inform the assurance of those standards. These include internal unit and teaching evaluations, and external data including Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT).
Our aim is that you are continually reflecting on the impact of your academic/professional role through quality enhancement and alignment with internal and external frameworks supporting the quality of learning and teaching. Upon completion of this module, you will develop a personal development plan, based on your choice of a professional development standards framework, that will support you in completing your probation requirements and/or set you up to progress in your higher education career.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module, you are expected to be able to:
- examine the legislative requirement in which Australian higher education institutions operate;
- access institutional policies and procedures relevant to your role as an educator;
- consider institutional, program and unit level data to inform and assure standards; and
- plan for your future professional development using a professional standards framework.