Quality Monitoring in Higher Education: the impact on student learning

Abstract

This paper reports on a case study set in the context of one New Zealand educational institution, the Auckland Institute of Technology, which considered the impact of quality monitoring on the improvement and enhancement of student learning within two undergraduate degree programmes. Quality in higher education is multifaceted and complex, and although there are different perceptions of quality monitoring in higher education, quality, whatever its focus, has become the vehicle through which accountability is addressed. It is argued that the focus for quality should, in a rapidly changing world, be on the attributes of graduates, where transformation of the learner is central. Quality monitoring should be concerned with improvement and enhancement of student learning. In the study, quality monitoring processes had quite a narrow impact and were not concerned with the complexity of a whole teaching programme, or issues such as leadership or the culture in which students learn. The influence of the social, economic, political and personal context in which the two programmes are situated was also considerable. Overall analysis confirmed that, for quality monitoring to have an impact on student learning, the emphasis must be on curriculum, learning, teaching and assessment.