Eveline Fallshaw

IT Planning for Strategic Support: Aligning Technology and Vision

While the appropriate adoption of moderntechnology creates new opportunities to facilitatelife-long learning, universities have to grapple withhow to provide on- and off-campus students withappropriate knowledge and transformative skills in anincreasingly competitive environment. As universitiesrevisit their mission and consider ways of dealingwith the expectations of both society and students, amajor challenge comes from aligning strategic planningand Information Technology (IT) planning. It isessential to have a strategic Information TechnologyPlan which assists in achieving core academicpriorities. The challenge is to maximise the benefitsof ongoing investment in IT by focusing on ways whichensure that the educational aims of the University areoptimally supported. This paper considers such anapproach to strategic IT planning in the context of alarge international technological institution andcritiques the implications of such an approach in thelight of experience and in the broader context of thenew geopolitical realities.

The practice of quality in assuring learning in higher education

There remains a lack of published empirical data on the substantive outcomes of higher learning and the establishment of quality processes for determining them. Studies that do exist are nationally focused with available rankings of institutions reflecting neither the quality of teaching and learning nor the diversity of institutions. This article describes two studies in which associate deans from Australian higher education institutions and focus groups of management and academics identify current issues and practices in the design, development and implementation of processes for assuring the quality of learning and teaching. Results indicate that developing graduate attributes and mapping assessments to measure outcomes across an entire programme necessitates knowledge creation strategies and systems as well as inclusive decision processes. Common elements supporting consistently superior outcomes include inclusivity of a range of teaching and support academics; embedded graduate attributes; consistent and appropriate assessment; digital collection mechanisms; and systematic analysis of outcomes used in programme review.