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Introduction

A review team visited the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (UWA) during the 2005-06 academic year to conduct an institutional review. The team comprised Professor A Jago, Professor T Kemp and Miss S Riches, reviewers, and Mr R A Platt, review secretary. The review was coordinated for the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) by Dr I Ainsworth, Assistant Director, Reviews Group. The purpose of institutional review is to provide public information on the quality of the opportunities available to students and on the academic standards of awards an institution offers. Institutional review leads to a judgement of confidence in the management of the quality and standards of the awards being offered by the institution.

The words 'academic standards' are used to describe the level of achievement that a student has to reach to gain an 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 teaching, support, assessment and learning opportunities are provided for them.

In institutional review both academic standards and academic quality are reviewed.

This report provides a summary of the findings of the review team and highlights some matters that a future institutional review team may wish to pursue.

Outcome of the review

As a result of its enquiries, the review team's view is that:

• confidence can be placed in the soundness of the institution'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 review team identified the following areas as being good practice:

• the integration of financial and academic planning through the work of the Planning Group in the Planning Round
• the rigour of the scheme (programme) approval and departmental review processes
• the arrangements in place to support those students studying through distance-learning methods, particularly in the Department of Information Studies
• the thorough scrutiny of external examiners' reports and the clear allocation of responsibility for taking appropriate action in response
• the work of the Careers Advisory Service in operating both the Student Skills Competition as a means of gaining feedback from employers of the students' acquisition of transferable skills, and the Year in Employment Scheme, and
• the high level of support given by Welsh-speaking academics to students studying through the medium of Welsh.

Recommendations for action

The review team advises the institution to:

• review its current management of the quality agenda to enable it to adopt a more proactive stance
• review, as a matter of urgency, the design of its degree schemes and the regulatory framework for awards with a view to satisfying itself that its students achieve all the planned learning outcomes associated with their intended award
• keep its assessment regulations under review, taking note of practice in the wider higher education sector
• review access to the library in vacation periods, especially for postgraduate research students, and
• review the accuracy of information provided to prospective and current students concerning the delivery of modules through the medium of Welsh with a view to ensuring that students have realistic expectations of the extent of Welsh-medium provision available to them.

The team further considers that it would be desirable for UWA to:

• consider the means by which good practice from the new annual monitoring process can be drawn out and disseminated across the institution, and how matters of concern or institutional level issues arising from the process are identified and handled.

External reference points

To provide further evidence to support its findings the review team also investigated the use made by the UWA 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 review suggest that the institution has engaged effectively with all elements of the Academic Infrastructure.

In due course the institutional review process will include a check on the reliability of the information set published by institutions as outlined in the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales' document W0405HE, Teaching Quality Information (TQI) Requirements for Higher Education in Wales. The review team noted that the institution had addressed these requirements and it was confident that UWA would continue to cooperate fully in providing such information as required.

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ISBN 978 1 84482 684 1