Engagement for quality development in higher education : a process for quality assurance of assessment

This paper reports on the design, development and evaluation of a novel process for quality assurance of assessments for entire educational programmes. The process was developed and tested by multidisciplinary teaching staff and consists of five phases: inventory, analyses, evaluation, planning change and realising change. The process for quality assurance was evaluated in three diverse programmes. The results show that the process forms a solid base for decisions on short-term as well as long-term quality improvements. It was also found to encourage the development of a quality culture and had an improving effect on the curriculum design, enhanced internal quality work and supported documentation for external quality assurance. The results show that the process has the capacity to engage and involve teachers and other internal stakeholders in the quality development of a range of educational programmes, promoting engaged change for improved quality in a higher education institution