Introduction
A team of auditors from the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) visited Goldsmiths College (the College) from 14 to 18 March 2005 to carry out an institutional audit. The purpose of the audit was to provide public information on the quality of the opportunities available to students and on the academic standards of the awards. The College is authorised to award degrees of the University of London.
To arrive at its conclusions the audit team spoke to members of staff throughout the College, to current students, and read a wide range of documents relating to the way the College manages the academic aspects of its provision.
The words 'academic standards' are used to describe the level of achievement that a student has to reach to gain an academic award (for example, a degree). It should be at a similar level across the UK.
Academic quality is a way of describing how well the learning opportunities available to students help them to achieve their award. It is about making sure that appropriate and effective teaching, support, assessment and learning opportunities are provided for them.
In institutional audit, both academic standards and academic quality are reviewed.
Outcome of the audit
As a result of its investigations, the audit team's view of the College is that:
- broad confidence can be placed in the soundness of the College's current and likely future management of the quality of its academic programmes and the academic standards of its awards.
Features of good practice
The audit team identified the following areas as being good practice:
- the commitment and proactive contribution of members of institutional and departmental support staff to the enhancement of the student experience
- the sharing of good practice via regular meetings of the departmental administrators with representatives of the Quality Affairs Office (QAO) and the Registry
- the support being given to learning and teaching through initiatives being undertaken by the Learning and Teaching Office and through the availability to Departments of Centre for Excellence in Learning Technology (CELT) fellowships
- the initiatives of the QAO in developing the College's quality agenda, including staff development initiatives in collaboration with partner institutions.
Recommendations for action
The audit team also recommends that the College should consider further action in a number of areas to ensure that the academic quality and standards of the awards it offers are maintained. The College is advised to:
- develop a clearer and more effective decision-making process for ensuring that the learning infrastructure meets student needs
- assure itself that it has in place comprehensive means of monitoring, evaluating, developing and improving the effectiveness of its quality assurance systems, and their impact on enhancement
- provide on a continuing basis such support for the QAO as will enable it to ensure that the College's quality assurance processes become fully and thoroughly embedded within departments
- resolve outstanding issues relating to the assurance of the standard of awards in collaborative provision
- monitor closely the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology and Creative Art Therapy programme delivered in Lausanne in order to ensure that the quality and standard of the student's learning experience is maintained at a level comparable with that of other centres including the College
- monitor and evaluate its proposed arrangements, when and where implemented, for Academic Board's exercise of its responsibilities for quality and standards, with particular reference to the role of Academic Committee and other key committees
- consider further the efficacy of its current systems for ensuring the comparability of its awards across departments at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
It would be desirable for the College to:
- strengthen involvement of external peers in the final approval of new academic programmes
- provide a clearer and more strategic formulation of its intentions for enhancement
- encourage a more systematic approach to preparation for and response to professional bodies in order to enhance College learning through the sharing of experience and good practice.
Design; History; Media and Communications; Psychology
To arrive at the conclusions and recommendations in the paragraphs above, the audit team also conducted a number of discipline audit trails to find out how well the College's systems and procedures were working at the discipline level. The College provided the team with documents, including student work, and the team spoke to members of staff and current students. As well as supporting the overall confidence statement given above, the team considered that the standard of student achievement in all the programmes was appropriate to the titles of the awards and their location within The framework for higher education qualifications in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (FHEQ). The team considered that the quality of learning opportunities available to students was suitable for programmes of study leading to those awards.
National reference points
To provide further evidence to support its findings the audit team also investigated the use made by the College of the Academic Infrastructure which QAA has developed on behalf of the whole of UK higher education. The Academic Infrastructure is a set of nationally agreed reference points that help to define both good practice and academic standards. The findings of the audit suggest that the College has responded appropriately to the FHEQ, subject benchmark statements, programme specifications and the Code of practice for the assurance of academic quality and standards in higher education, published by QAA.
From 2004, the published information set will include the recommended summaries of external examiners' reports and of feedback from current students for each programme. The College was alert to the requirements set out in the Higher Education Funding Council for England's (HEFCE) document 02/15, Information on quality and standards in higher education, and to the implications of document HEFCE 03/51, Information on quality and standards in higher education: Final guidance, and was moving in an appropriate manner to fulfil its responsibilities in this respect.
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