Internal Quality Internal Quality Assurance Practice Assurance Practice

in Slovakiain Slovakia-some -some RemarqueRemarquess

Jan Bujnak University of Zilina Slovakiajan.bujnak@fstav.uniza.sk

Partners involved:-Students: knowledge in the chosen field, good degree, diplomas-Employers: qualified and trained graduates-University: enough knowledge, skills to study-Teachers: appropriate knowledge from the previous courses,-Society: educated and responsible people.

Different approaches to the quality in education:- Quality from the didactic point of view – optimization of the teaching and learning process,- Quality from the economic point of view – education costs,- Quality from the social point of view – social demand for education,- Quality from the consumer point of view – demand of students, employers, parents, Quality from the management point of view – optimization of organization of education.

Issues to control:

- Teaching methods,- Tutorial methods-students with learning difficulty,- Students feedback,- Monitoring of students progress,- Checks of student needs meeting,- Student progress assessment

Techniques of control:- student´ questionnaires,- external stakeholders, employers, and professional bodies,- meeting of course/field committees,- meeting of subject boards,

Who:Administration,Staff development units,Quality assurance divisions.

What:-Evaluation of student knowledge to determine the quality of teaching and learning-level of knowledge, skills and habits necessary for future occupations-variety of methods and means of revision determined by individual study programs

How:Student's feedback can be provided in several ways:-individual discussions during consultation hours or friendly dialogues,-discussions in seminars – group attitude,-mutual discussions of teachers to share experiences,-mutual observations of lectures or seminars,-tutors playing a role of intermediary between groups and the management,-participation of students in management meetings,-regularly meetings of management and students communities,-questionnaires

Management should check:- credits systems, especially in the first two years,- content of new subjects, their continuity with other subject,- overlapping of contents of different subjects,-quality of study materials,-organization of exams, especially during the last year of study.

Advantage of using questionnaires:-easily distributed, collected, evaluated, finding out opinions of great number of students at the same time,-easily gaining information about teacher's work,-to help teachers to better recognize the content or difficulty of the lectures, seminars and exercises,-to motivate the students to participate in solving real problems,

Critical objectives to questionnaires:-non-objective evaluation because on dependency on such variable as sympathy, degree of acceptability, size of group and the way of interpretation,-influence of facts as the gender of respondent, looks of rooms,-concentration only on the negative features of teacher's work, respondents ignorance.

Basic considerations:-Who will organize the measurement- teachers, students parliement, employers, external agency.

-Who made questionnaires,-questionnaires is voluntary, semi-voluntary or obligatory,-used in every group or in every subject,-time-table in organizing,standard or non-standard form.

Very brief and effortless questionnaire with only 3 questions:-What were the BEST features of the course-What were the WORST feature of the course,-In what ways the course could be improved.

If we expect student´s suggestions:-content of subject,-methodology of the lecture interpretation,-intensity of subject,-level of providing with study materials,-way of continuous assessment during semester,-condition of obtaining credits, exams.

The complex questionnaire:-man or female,-accommodation,-study success,-study conditions,-teaching methodology,-difficulty of subject,-comparison with the other similar subject,-study material available,-relation to previous and following subjects,-percentage of your attendance,-weekly hours of self-study,-is the number of teaching hours sufficient,level of difficulty of exams,-suggestion for improvement.