Craig McInnis

Changing Academic Work Roles: The everyday realities challenging quality in teaching

A national survey of academics in Australian universities provides the basis for this discussion of changing work practices influencing the quality of teaching. The paper reports the shifts in time and commitment to teaching over the last decade, the impact of changes in approaches to teaching on academic workloads, and the everyday obstacles that academics identify as hindering their teaching. The paper also identifies some aspects of diversity in the work experiences of academics. Work role problems are not experienced in the same way by academics at different ages and career stages, or indeed, in different institutions and disciplinary fields. This diversity presents a major difficulty for national and institutional efforts aimed at addressing the growing problems associated with changes in academic work. The paper suggests that academic workloads and work roles have reached a critical point where nothing short of major reform will be adequate if efforts to improve the quality of teaching are to be achieved.

Academics and Professional Administrators in Australian Universities: Dissolving Boundaries and New Tensions.

Abstract This paper reports the results of a national survey of administrators’ work roles satisfaction and values in relation to those of academics surveyed on similar issues in an earlier study. The paper identifies some crucial areas of difference in the values attached to work and the perceptions of work practices. Issues and tensions at the everyday work interface between academics and administrators are identified as central to the likelihood, or otherwise, of universities managing major changes. 1An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, Albuquerque, November 1997. The author is grateful to Fiona Lacy for help preparing this paper.

The Development of an Extended Course Experience Questionnaire

Universities in Australia have been using the course experience questionnaire (CEQ) for a number of years to measure the quality of teaching. Recently, there have been increasing calls for a broader perspective that takes into account the potential of non-classroom context influences on the student learning experience. This project undertook to develop a broader instrument that added a range of scales that could be linked to the existing instrument. A sample of almost 4000 students responded to the trial instrument. The trials suggest that the existing ‘good teaching’, ‘generic skills’, ‘clear goals’, ‘appropriate workload’ and ‘appropriate assessment’ scales can be supplemented by the following additional scales: ‘student support’, ‘learning resources’, ‘learning community’, ‘graduate qualities’ and ‘intellectual motivation’. These new scales were shown through Rasch analyses to be psychometrically reliable and accurate.

The Possibility of Using Student Evaluations in Vietnamese Higher Education

The potential for using student evaluations in Vietnamese higher education is explored. A study is reported of the attitudes of department heads and teachers in a university towards the use of student evaluations on teacher work and their possibility for use in Vietnamese higher education. It is argued that if student evaluations could be implemented to give teachers feedback on their teaching performance in Vietnamese institutions, the quality of teaching would be improved. However, there are major cultural obstacles to be overcome before such schemes could be successfully implemented.

The Australian Qualifications Framework

The major objective of the Australian Qualifications Framework is to provide a coherent national framework to embrace the diverse range of vocational and academic qualifications across the three sectors concerned with post-compulsory education: schools, vocational and training, and higher education. The Framework was established in 1995 and is meant to serve a number of purposes: facilitating flexible pathways in education and training between the sectors; encouraging cross-sectoral collaboration; and, promoting recognition of the Australian higher education courses in the globalised market. The Framework has only a broad and indirect impact on the setting and maintenance of academic standards in higher education. Its impact on standards comes from its inclusion as an element of the Australian Higher Education Quality Assurance Framework developed in 2000 aimed primarily at protecting Australias international reputation for quality in higher education. The Qualifications Framework provides a reference point for the National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes, and for the auditing of the standards of awards by the Australian Universities Quality Agency.

Coursework Masters Degrees and Quality Assurance: implicit and explicit factors at programme level

Abstract The contemporary Australian postgraduate context is an elaborate setting in which to consider the nature of quality assurance in higher education. The masters degree, in particular, has been marked over the past decade by rapid growth in student numbers, the gradual dominance of coursework delivery, and diversity in course goals and structure. Through case study research of ten coursework masters programmes an attempt was made to identify the individual factors that are contributors to course quality. The policies and activities that academic staff associate with course quality and quality assurance are reported and analysed. A dividing line can be drawn between explicit institutional quality assurance, as formulated in policy, and the implicit perceptions and actions of staff. It is argued that the design of effective quality assurance at programme level requires a better appreciation and accommodation of both.

Equity Policy in Australian Higher Education: A Case of Policy Stasis

The formulation of equity policy and its change from a radical to a conservative position provides an illuminating case study of policy development in Australian higher education. Improving the higher education participation of under-represented community groups became a major government objective in Australia during the mid-1980s. The principal target at the time was the significant under-representation of students from certain social backgrounds, especially in the elite professional degree courses. By the early 1990s, a detailed equity policy framework designed to reduce inequities and imbalances in higher education participation was finalised and in operation. Yet after a decade of policy implementation, the overall effects of the policy on improving the participation of the most significantly disadvantaged groups, including people from lower socio-economic backgrounds and from rural or isolated regions, are arguably negligible. Despite the apparent ineffectiveness of policy, the basic policy framework has remained largely fixed, if not inherently immutable. This chapter examines the particular difficulties the issue of widening access to higher education creates for policy formulation and implementation. We begin by tracing the social and political origins of the Australian equity agenda and outlining the core features of equity policy, before presenting a critical analysis of the policy outcomes.