Click here to view the video transcript
So when we think about course quality and the quality of your course experience for your students there are three big picture topics or concepts that are worth understanding from a big picture. There’s compliance, which is what is required. It’s what our regulators expect, it’s what accrediting bodies expect. There’s academic quality which are the standards that we set for ourselves. So these could be a set of principles or frameworks that your university asks you to meet. And enhancement, which is the ongoing improvement of both of these things. And when we think about your role and one way in which you as a teacher feed into these processes is through the continuous improvement and review of your courses.
So to start you off with this process I’ve set a few high-level questions to consider about the course, your course content and your approaches to teaching and learning. For now thinking big picture because your answers to these high-level questions will get you in the frame of mind for seeing your course through a critical lens. And we can use that critical lens for narrowing in on the areas for which you’d like to take action.
At the end of each delivery of your course it is imperative to make time to review and reflect on the course experience which includes both the course content and your approaches to teaching and learning. Three useful concepts for guiding the continuous improvement of your course experience are compliance, academic quality, and enhancement. These concepts are framed below by using questions for you to answer about your course content and approaches to teaching and learning.
- Compliance: How well did my course content and/or teaching approach meet the requirements of the regulator, profession/industry, or accrediting bodies? What evidence do I have to support this?
- Academic quality: How well did my course content and/or teaching approach meet the expectations set by my university/college/school? What evidence do I have to support this?
- Enhancement: What deliberate actions can I take to improve areas of my course content and/or teaching approach? How will I monitor these actions? And what will be the indicator(s) that improvement occurred?
By engaging with and responding to these questions you are getting into a continuous improvement mindset for academic quality assurance. While answering these questions can be done independently you might benefit from doing this with others such as your colleagues who may have delivered the course with you or in the past, an academic developer, or a learning designer. In the sections that follow we will get more specific in the process of reviewing and improving your course.
Discussions
What other compliance, academic quality, or enhancement questions could you ask about your course experience and what evidence would you suggest using to respond to the question?
Please share your thoughts and questions in the comments section below.