Agenda and Papers - University of Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh
Senate Quality Assurance Committee – 25 May 2011
Strategic priorities 2011/12
1. Enhancement-Led Institutional Review
A key priority for 201/12 is the successful delivery, under the leadership of the
Director of Academic Standards and Quality Assurance, of the Enhancement-Led
Institutional Review in October and November 2011. Quality Assurance Committee
will allocate follow-up responsibility to the relevant University authorities and will
monitor progress against recommendations one year on from the review. A
successful outcome to the review will support the University’s strategic goal of
“excellence in learning and teaching”. [Strategic Plan 2008-12]
2. Quality Assurance of Collaborative and Distributed Learning Task Group
With a substantial expansion underway of the University’s provision in on-line
distance learning it is timely to ensure that University policies and procedures support
the delivery of high quality provision in this area and more broadly in terms of
distributed learning and employer engagement. Building on the work of the
Collaborative Provision task group (that focused on collaborations with other HEIs)
a task group will be set up to assess the extent to which the University’s current
practice maps onto the QAA precepts for flexible and distributed learning (in
particular collaboration with employers and online distance learning), revise
procedures and guidance where necessary, and will consider how students studying
remotely are involved in processes developed for on-site provision. This work will
support the University’s strategic themes of “engaging with our wider community”,
“advancing internationalisation” and “enhancing our student experience”. [Strategic
Plan 2008-12]
3. Assuring the Quality of the Student Experience Task Group
There is a need for the University to derive greater value and insight from its core
quality assurance activities, while also rationalising and simplifying its surveying of
students. Working in collaboration with the Student Voice project being undertaken
by Strategic Planning, a task group will propose core content for monitoring activity
and explore means by which the administration of surveys can be managed most
effectively, and usefulness and consistency of data maximised. This supports one of
the strategies in the University’s Strategic Plan 2008-12 within the “Enhancing our
student experience” theme, namely “[to] standardise analysis of, and action taken in
response to, internal and external student feedback”. The outputs of this work will
inform follow-on work by Senate Learning and Teaching Committee on
enhancements based on evaluations of the student experience.
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