A MULTI-DIMENSIONAL APPROACH IN DEVELOPING A FRAMEWORK FOR INTERNAL QUALITY ASSURANCE OF SECOND CYCLE

The rapid growth of engineering education requires the proper maintenance of academic quality in educational institutions in order to withstand competition in the global market. External accreditation and internal quality assurance are two very important processes that are carried out in order to maintain the quality of engineering education. Accreditation is a process designed to determine whether or not an educational programme has met or exceeded the published standards of the accreditation agency, whereas the purpose of internal quality assurance is to develop a quality culture within an institution, and to implement a strategy for the continuous enhancement of quality. Although several quality assurance standards and guidelines have been established and implemented worldwide through various international, regional and national agencies; relevant literature searches show that there is no common agreement or criterion that can be used in the quality assurance of engineering education. In this article, the authors elaborate on several important issues regarding the accreditation and quality assurance of engineering education. The authors define internal quality assurance of an engineering programme as: enabled by certain quality enablers, a structured process of quality analysis (benchmarking, monitoring, evaluating, assessing, guaranteeing and improving the quality) of the design, resources, delivery and outcomes of the programme; resulting in defect avoidance, strategic alignment, continuous improvement, and stakeholder trust. A brief outline of a multi-dimensional framework for internal quality assurance of engineering programmes is provided in this article