Analyzing University Quality Assurance in the UK

¶ … Role of Defining and Measuring Quality of Teachers in Setting Standards

As the course of higher education is continuously changing, quality teaching has become an important topic. With the geographical and social diversification and expansion of the student body, several new methods of teaching are called on by the students with modifications in interactions between the professors and the students. The fund providers, the employers, the student and families and the government now demand value for their spending and also desire teaching efficiencies. The definition of quality teaching is still not clear with some scholars regarding it as property and some as an outcome; some also considers it a continuous process of decreasing negatives; so, quality teaching cannot be completely appraised or grasped (Henard & Ringuet, n.d.).

The initiatives for quality teaching are extremely diverse in terms of both function and nature. They are taken at different levels, which aim to work on the pedagogical methods while some others work on the student's global environment. Some of them work on the grass root level while others are top down processes. The recent initiatives have worked to increase the teamwork between course plans, goal setting and teachers. An important thing to be kept in mind when enhancing student learning is that the initiatives of quality teaching should not only be focused on the teachers, but also on the entire environment of the institution (Henard & Ringuet, n.d.). It is also important to measure the effect of the initiatives so that up-to-date information is collected and improvements can be made to further polish the process. This is a challenging process and selecting the measuring indicators is crucial as it affects the teaching methods of the teacher. The indicators can also lead to misunderstandings; so, there need to be an agreement between the scholars that a room should be left for the discussion of the obtained figures. Student questionnaire is an important indicator because it is the students that are highly affected by the teaching methods while in-class evaluation methods provide good outcomes (Henard & Ringuet, n.d.). Several institutions have diverse missions, which, when compared to quality dimensions lead to doubtful values; so, different pedagogic phenomenon and process variables are more likely to be the primary indicators in various educational institutes. For example, the different ways used by University of Oxford and the Open University in England like National Student Survey ratings are important to other universities as well (Gibbs, 2010).