Eva Lo Franco

TESF Methodology for Statistics Education Improvement.

The need for universities to achieve excellence in the services they provide has been the subject of research for several decades. The idea of involving students and recognizing the importance of their opinions has led to the creation of various models and tools. This paper focuses on teaching, a central service from which improvement actions of an academic institution should always begin. The article reviews and updates the previously developed Teaching Experiments and Student Feedback methodology. The methodology, which is primarily addressed to statistics teachers, allows practical aspects to be organized and decisions to be made based on data that has been collected from students and scientifically analyzed. The steps for building a student satisfaction index are also described. This index, in its most complete version, takes into account possible correlations between importance of the evaluated aspect and scores, both of which are provided by the students. The paper presents an application of the methodology to a statistics course taught by one of the authors.

Design of a university course quality by Teaching Experiments and Student Feedback (TESF)

Quality of the academic system must be constantly monitored, especially under conditions of growing competition and limited resources. Those who are interested in quality, doing research and teaching on it, should ensure quality of the processes for which they are responsible. Teaching is one of the primary services offered by a university. For it, all fundamental principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) must be valid. In this article the authors propose a methodology for designing the quality of a university course, considered as a basic service of a complex educational system. The methodology is based on the concurrent use of teaching experiments performed by a teacher, and the SERVQUAL model for the evaluation of student feedback. Such methodology can be adopted in any educational context. It is a useful tool for continuous course improvement. The article presents the application of the methodology in two consecutive editions of a statistics course at the University of Palermo, Italy.

Corporate Social Responsibility: A Survey of the Italian SA8000 Certified Companies

Today’s society requires companies to act more and more effectively for the general good, by respecting human rights and the environment. Innovative and enlightened companies try to meet this need through the adoption of several initiatives. Accordingly, the International Standard Organisation is now working on attempts to unify these initiatives and to formulate an internationally recognised standard, providing guidance to companies on social responsibility. Currently the SA8000 international standard is the most often used tool – based on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) philosophy – which guarantees the respect of fundamental workers’ rights. Since 2003, Italy holds the world record for its number of SA8000 certified companies. This paper discusses the findings of a two‐stage survey of the Italian SA8000 certified companies carried out over the last two years. The focus of the survey is on both reasons and effects of the implementation of SA8000 standard. In the first stage the rate of response was very high while in the second stage it was satisfactory. The results provide a clear picture of the companies and their degree of achivement and awareness of the fundamental principles of human resource management. A section of the survey deals with some issues related to the Public Sector.