A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

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Teaching, supervising, learning
Interrogating practice
Do you know how the systems of feedback and quality management
(including committee structures, course review, external examining and
feedback loops) work in your department and institution?
It is at programme level that the individual teacher will be mainly involved in ensuring
the quality of provision. All those who teach need to understand the purposes and context
of the programmes on offer, and to be aware of the elements that comprise a ‘quality’
learning experience for students. They will also need to be familiar with and understand
the use of programme specifications, levels, benchmarking and internal audit
requirements. Teachers will be required to participate in formal monitoring and review
of activities relating to learning and the learning environment. These include procedures
such as ensuring that evaluation feedback and student assessment results are collected
and analysed or that course materials are distributed in a timely fashion. Delivering a
good ‘student learning experience’ requires a high level of competence in and
understanding of teaching and learning in higher education and the development of
reflective practice and peer review of teaching (see Part 3).
Interrogating practice
Has your view of your role in maintaining and enhancing educational quality
changed after reading this chapter? How?
CONCLUSION AND OVERVIEW
Assuring and enhancing educational quality and academic standards can be seen as
complex and multifaceted activities, geared towards ensuring that UK higher education
and graduates compete successfully in a global market. But at the centre of these wideranging
activities are the individual learner and lecturer and what happens in their
classroom and programmes. It is often hard to maintain a balance between ‘quality as
inspection’ and ‘quality as enhancement’ and between ‘requirements’ and what makes
good sense in terms of effective teaching practices.
Higher education in the UK is largely funded by public money, and students as fee
payers have a set of often ill-defined expectations relating to their programme of learning.
The current national quality agendas firmly set out to define the outcomes of learning
programmes and to make higher education more transparent and accountable.