Pre-Conference Workshops - Monday, April 2, 2007

INQAAHE will continue the tradition of preceding the conference with a day of intensive workshops on some of the more technical issues in quality assurance.  The current schedule is as follows.

Session 1: 9.30am to 12.30pm
“External review of quality assurance agencies”	Workshop Facilitator: Maria Jose Lemaitre,  Secretaria Técnica, Comision Nacional De Acreditacion De Pregrado , Chile
“Preparing institutions for the self evaluation process”	Workshop Facilitator: Dr. Terry Miosi, Postsecondary Education Quality Assessment Board, Ontario
Session 2:  1.30pm to 4.30pm
"National Regulatory Framework for Quality Assurance: Impact on National & Transnational Education”	Workshop Facilitators: Dr. Imran Ho-Abdullah Deputy Director (Strategic Planning) Center for Academic Development Dr. Lilia Halim, Dean, Education Faculty Universiti Kebangsaan, Makaysia
"Effective Site Visits"	Workshop Facilitators: Mary Guerard, Curriculum Leader University of Ontario Institute of Technology

 

Workshop Contents and Background on Facilitators

WORKSHOP 1: "External review of quality assurance agencies"

The external review of quality assurance agencies is a fairly new phenomenon in the field of higher education. The external review, gains increasingly interest by all stakeholders involved in this area. Especially the quality assurance agencies themselves strive to demonstrate their own credibility and professionalism. The pre-conference will cover a set of questions in order to come to a broader understanding of the issue. It will include examples of (good) practice, in order to provide practical recommendations and considerations:

 What is the purpose of the review?

• What is the object of the review?
• Which criteria are being applied?
• What is an adequate procedure?
• Who organises the review?
• Who are the experts involved?
• Why is the external review of quality assurance agencies an issue?
• Which experience and examples of (good) practice exist so far?

 

María José Lemaitre, Sociologist, with graduate studies in Education, is presently Secretary General at the National Commission for Programme Accreditation in Chile.  From July 1990 to July 1999 she occupied an equivalent position in the Higher Council for Education in Chile. There she was responsible for the design, implementation and development of institutional evaluation processes leading to a certification of institutional autonomy of new private Higher Education institutions in the country. From 1990 to 1997 she was in charge of the design and implementation of the Programme for the Improvement of the Quality and Equity of Secondary Education (MECE-Media) at the Ministry of Education in Chile, which developed into a full fledged reform of Secondary Education currently under way.

 

She was the President of the International Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE) from 2001 to 2003 and is currently the President of the Iberoamerican Network for the Accreditation of Quality Higher Education.  She represents the Chilean Government at the Working Group for Evaluation and Accreditation of Higher Education within the educational sector of MERCOSUR.

 

She has published many articles on higher and secondary education, and has acted as a consultant for governmental agencies, international organisations and higher education institutions in several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania.

 

 

WORKSHOP 2: "Preparing institutions for the self evaluation process”

The self evaluation process is frequently considered by many experts in the field of quality assessment to be the most important element in the quality assurance process, since ultimately the delivering institution is the only real assurer of the quality of its operation and its education.   While many educational institutions have long had their own self-assessment procedures as a method of quality control and enhancement, the self evaluation process has become a mandatory element required of institutions by almost all QA agencies.

 

This workshop will look at the two major types of self-assessment, institutional and program, and focus on three tasks:

·          isolate the most critical aspects/activities that ought to be the focus of an educational institution’s self-assessment;

·          examine/develop sets of questions that will provide the institution with a guideline by which it can conduct its own assessment; and

·          examine/develop a process and procedures that will provide the institution with a model on how to implement and manage the self-assessment process.

  

Terry Miosi, Ph.D., has been a member of the Secretariat of the Postsecondary Education Quality Assessment Board of Ontario since its inception in 2001, after spending 14 years as Manager and Deputy Superintendent of the Private Vocational Schools Unit of the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities of Ontario. Prior to joining the Ontario government, he held the positions of Director of the General and Professional Studies programs of University of Toronto's School of Continuing Studies, President of the New University-Level Adult Education Learning Centre of Toronto, and Director of Shaw Colleges in Toronto.  He was also the president of the Canadian Society for Training and Development for five years, and received a special citation in 1999 for his contributions to the development of national standards of practice for, and certification of, professional trainers.  He was a founding member and served for 20 years on the National Accreditation Commission, which is concerned with assessing and accrediting private diploma granting institutions throughout Canada.

Terry received a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1976 in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, after which he taught in the Religious Studies and Ancient Near Eastern Studies Departments at U of T.  He has numerous published works in the fields of Egyptology and early Christian history, and has been regularly involved in administrative and field work in Egypt with the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities and the Akhenaton Temple Project.   

 

WORKSHOP 3: National Regulatory Framework for Quality Assurance: Impact on National and Transnational Education"

 

This workshop facilitates discussion of the diversity that transnational education brings to higher education in a net importer country and how regulatory frameworks to assure quality can be designed to address the diversity.

 

The workshop will seek to look at examples of cross-border education programs and illustrate how the legal framework for quality assurance addresses issues such as:

·  stakeholder participation

·  transparency, fairness and objectivity

·  equivalence of standards and international benchmarking

·  flexibility and sovereignty

 

 

Assoc Prof. Imran Ho Abdullah is Deputy Director (Strategic Planning) at the Centre for Academic Development, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. His office oversees the planning and monitoring of the university’s strategic plans; institutional restructuring; benchmarking and also internal academic audits. Assoc. Prof. Imran Ho was a member of the  IIEP/UNESCO/RIHED research group that examined Institutional Restructuring in Asia involving five nations – Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Mongolia. He has also been a member of the academic committee of the Global University Network for Innovations (Asia-Pacific) and organised the GUNI-AP 2005 Conference on enhancing quality and strengthening research capacities in universities. Assoc Prof Imran Ho has presented papers on strategic planning and key performance indicators in various forums and seminar of Higher Education He has also co-edited a book on Management Practice and Quality Culture in Institutions of Higher Leearning in Malaysia (Amalan Pengurusan dan Budaya Kualiti Institusi Pengajian Tinggi di Malaysia. 2006. ISBN983-3168-05-1).  Assoc Prof Imran Ho is a Fellow of the Cambridge Commonweath Society and receive his M.Phil from Cambridge University and PhD in Linguistics from the University of Otago, New Zealand.

 

 

Assoc Prof. Lilia Halim is Dean, Faculty of Education at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. She was involved in the planning of the university’s strategic plans and is currently assisting the Ministry of Higher Education in planning their strategic plans.  Assoc Prof Lilia Halim has been consulted on the functions of quality assurance in the teaching and learning process by various State Universities in Indonesia, which were previously Teacher Training Institutions.   She has presented papers on benchmarking and issues of quality in various forums and seminar of education.  

 

Assoc Prof Lilia receives her PhD in Science Education, King’s College London, University of London, UK.  

 

 

 

WORKSHOP 4: "Effective Site Visits"

 

In this workshop the facilitators will share their practical experiences and suggestions for planning the site visit component of quality assessments.

 

·  preparation of the agenda with site visit team

·  organizing institutional resources  

·  preparing academic and administrative staff

·  managing the site visit

·  managing the institution’s responses to negative comments and suggestions for improvements from the site team.

 

They will focus particular attention on aspects of site visits which provide evidence of quality at a specialized university, and the facilitators are planning to have members of site visit teams present to comment on effective and efficient institutional strategies that they have encountered.

 

Mary Guerard, M.A.Ed. was part of the start-up team for UOIT, which was Canada’s newest university, opening its doors to students in September 2003. She was responsible for the preparation of curriculum proposals for the initial undergraduate programs in Business, Criminology, Education, Engineering, Nuclear Science, Nursing, and Science which were submitted for quality assessment by the Postsecondary Education Quality Assessment Board (PEQAB). Since 2003 she has continued this work in collaboration with faculty members developing additional undergraduate and new graduate program proposals.  All UOIT programs have been submitted for quality assessment by PEQAB, and graduate programs are also assessed by the Ontario Council on Graduate Studies (OCGS).