Business Analysis of Quality Assurance Agency - Coursework Example

Business Analysis Introduction Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) endeavours to obtain a number of aims and objectives. They include: “Enhance the quality and secure the standards of UK higher education whenever delivered in order to maintain public confidence; provide leadership, through knowledge and resources, in assuring and enhancing the quality of higher education within the UK and internationally; extend and enhance the value and reach of QAA’s services within and beyond UK higher education” (QAA About Us, n.d.). On the face of it, these are highly instrumental aims and attract the eye of every academician, but the ground reality is considerably different from these tall claims and aims of the QAA. For example, Grove (2014) contends that the QAA has been unable to keep its pace with the rapid transformation taking place in UK education system and its higher education system more specifically. Additionally, McGhee (2014) elucidates that the Higher Education Funding Council for England has been authorised to review the way higher education courses are investigated, in other words, it is diminishing the role of QAA in the UK’s education system. In today’s fast world, every field is undergoing rapid change and transformation. Thanks to the use of technology that has enabled the organizations and other academic institutions to improve their performance and productivity. For example, use of information communication technologies in the academic institutions and their usefulness for obtaining the academic objectives is of crucial importance for institutions. However, QAA has not been able to check the pulse of technology and its growing influence in different academic fields. More clearly, the description provided by McGhee clearly highlights that the role of QAA has been disappointing over this period as the Higher Education Funding Council for England is doing the similar work which is currently being done by the QAA. This replacement also highlights that the QAA has failed to satisfy its own objective because the establishment of the Higher Education Funding Council for England shows lack of trust by the regulatory authorities on the current functioning of the QAA; at the same time, it also proves that the QAA has even failed to highlight the shortcomings in the current academic infrastructure of the United Kingdom. More recently, the license of some institutions have been revoked by the regulating agency and this step highlights that the QAA faces some serious issues of performance (Morgan, 2015). Justification for techniques In this paper, data flow diagram has been used to apply the four perspectives (investigate situation, consider perspectives, analyse needs and define requirements) along with socio-technical and object oriented paradigms are going to be used. In this regard, it is important to mention that QAA is mandated and authorised to monitor the academic activities in the United Kingdom and ascertain whether they comply with the academic quality codes and other regulatory requirements for satisfying the UK’s academic quality standards. Based on this situation, it can be deduced that the academic quality codes and quality standards are largely qualitative in their very nature and due to this quality, only qualitative information has been provided by the QAA and its academic reviews and reports. At the same time, the absence of the use of quantitative data requires that the application of four perspectives along with other two paradigms should assess whether the QAA has been by and large successful obtaining the objective during the previous. For this objective, it is highly essential that the application of scenario analysis would be carried out and applied to understand the current core long term and strategic objectives. This understanding will enable to provide a clear-cut understanding about the strategic objectives and methods that have used for obtaining the academic objectives. Additionally, the author has increased the scope of this perspective so as to fully understand the QAA academic objectives and academic quality benchmarks. For example, QAA Mission, QAA Values, QAA Strategy, QAA Review Process, QAA Quality Code and QAA Partners have been determined to represent the application of four perspectives and two paradigms. More clearly, QAA Mission, QAA Strategy and QAA Review Process have been used for investigating the situation, whereas QAA Quality Code for analysing needs and QAA Partners for considering perspectives and defining requirements of different stakeholders in this very process. Moreover, Rich picture of different stakeholders in the form of QAA Partners have been used to represent the socio-technical aspect whereas context diagram uses QAA Review Process for representing the object-oriented paradigm. Scenario Application Investigate situation, consider perspectives, analyse needs and define requirements Graph 01: QAA Mission Source: (QAA, 2015) QAA has been authorised to improve the academic quality standards in the UK (QAA n.d.). the QAA’s mandate and scope is limited to two perspectives: monitoring and advising. In the monitoring perspective, the agency is authorised to overview the academic standards, methods, policies and other activities that are carried out in the UK’s educational institutions. For example, a college has admission policy of giving priority female students over male students. In this case, QAA will start the review process in which the policy of this college will be taken into review and considered as well. in this review process, the college’s whole admission policy will be reviewed by keeping in view the UK’s higher education standards and quality codes as well. if the college’s existing discrimination policy violates the UK’s education standards, the agency would sent an advice asking the college to change the policy as the current policy is violating the UK’s higher education standards in which discrimination in any form and kind is not allowed but is stricitly discouraged by authorised. In this regard, it is important to mention that the QAA has not a regulatory power to legal action against this college; this is because that the QAA’s mandate is restricted to monitor and advice as its independent status requires the application of these two standards in the academic field of the UK. However, it is still relevant to mention that this specific example offers the application of QAA’s mission. First, the QAA has monitored this activity and after evaluating this academic activity, the advice has been given to the college. In other words, the QAA has not only safeguarded the UK’s education standards but also improved the quality of education as well. However, it is difficult to obtain the long term education objectives through an independent agency particularly in such environment where education is the backbone of the economy. First, it is still unclear what action will be taken by the QAA if the college refuses to act on the advice and what other investigative mechanisms are available to the QAA for following up such cases. More specifically, it has been observed that it is the role of the a regulatory body to send a strong warning to such colleges along with the disciplinary action as it would discourage the other colleges and academic institutions to avoid any such activity in the future. Graph 02: QAA Values Source: (QAA, 2015). QAA is based on certain values which represent the moral and ethical outlook of the agency. For example, the concept of accountability is based on the notion that every action and its justification are given to the higher authority from where power to take action is delegated to the operational staff member. However, the QAA has not further detailed accountability framework in which how individuals are held accountable for their actions to their superior authority although they have shown their commitment with this highly moral and ethical value. In the absence of required level of transparency in the accountability aspect, it would be very difficult to rely on the claims of the QAA because it is not and it will not be sufficient to write and adhere to the concept of accountability but more clear but practical actions should demonstrate the implementation of words into actions. Integrity refers to fair and impartial judgement of any activity. In this type of activity, adherence to moral and ethical values is of crucial importance besides avoiding bias while assessing any activity is also essential. In other words, integrity is composed of two activities: fair judgement and application of impartiality. In this regard, it is important to mention that bias and fair judgement are subjective in their very nature; reflecting personal values, beliefs and understanding play a crucial role while judging fairly along with avoiding bias. Under this situation, the chances of unfair judgement and use of bias cannot be avoided as they are perceived differently by different individuals. Keeping this view in mind, the QAA has not provided any constructive ethical framework in which values relating to fair judgement and bias avoidance are highly discussed. Consequently, the chances of attaining the long term academic objectives become largely distant. Professionalism refers to adherence to the professional standards and practices carried out for completing a piece of work. For example, the QAA has developed quality codes aimed for attaining and retaining the long term objectives attached with the QAA’s very existence. These quality codes are those standards that are relevant and applicable while carrying out the process of review of different academic conducts and academic policies of academic institutions. However, the shortcoming of this approach is that it is highly subjective and judgemental, leaving a very small room for quantities assessment framework which is considerably more relevant and effective when it is compared with the qualitative and subjective assessment of processes and academic activities. Graph 03: QAA Strategy Source: (QAA, 2015) Strategy always plays a pivotal role for obtaining objectives. Strategy refers to that type of action which brings a plan into action by putting every piece of plan onto the practical ground. For all agencies, including the QAA, strategy is key driving force as it entails and represents all those steps which are thought, constructed, developed and subsequently planned before going to put them into action. Keeping in view the significance of strategy, the QAA has developed its strategy which is based on five pillars: Collaborative, unified, externally focused, professional and innovative. The QAA strategy is not effective in its very essence. First, the provided framework is filled with various loopholes which make it hard for the agency to obtain its short and long term aims and objectives. More specifically, the provided strategy framework cannot be fully implemented uniform ally. For example, unified refers to a collective agency approach for working and obtaining its general and specific goals as well whereas innovative aspect requires that the agency should encourage others to develop entrepreneurial spirit. Under this situation, it is unavoidable that the staff members of the agency cannot use or recommend any way that does not come under the ambit of QAA standards and higher education objectives. In contrast, every review has different requirements and objectives and issues so it is almost impossible to remain innovative while discharging the duty as well. Additionally, this strategy is ambiguous one. First, it has only highlighted the steps that encompass in the strategy. Instead of highlighting and describing a comprehensive framework detailing the logical and understandable collaboration of different steps in the QAA strategy, the framework only details the steps and their significance with regard to the QAA aims and objectives. Based on this situation, it can be deduced that the QAA has failed to develop a comprehensive and practical strategy framework capable enough to include all those possible situations where review and other steps are required and carried out as well. at the same time, there is another draw of this loophole which is that this disconnection will not be helpful in obtaining the long term academic aims and objectives of QAA because every strategy cannot be implemented in parts instead it is enforced in a compact form which makes it possible to attain the desired objectives. Graph 04: QAA Review Process Source: (QAA, 2015) This graph represents the central objective and activity of the QAA. The QAA review process is composed of five broad reviews which are designed to satisfy the objectives relating to different academic institutions and programmes as well. In the first review which is about review of higher education providers, the QAA has developed four supporting review processes which are differently designed to meet different objectives. For example, higher education reviews: Wales is mainly applicable to Wales and institutions functioning within the boundary of this area. Based on this situation, it can be deduced that each review process is based on geographical, academic and other benchmarks especially designed to serve the related objectives. In the review of higher education delivered in further education colleges, three forms of review are carried out in which higher education review, review of college higher education and initial review and integrated quality and enhancement-led review (Northern Ireland) are the main types of reviews applicable for this category. Similarly, review of higher education delivered by private providers is consisted of two review forms: education oversight review and review for specific course designation. In this regard, it is important to mention that course characteristics and construction of different academic courses are determined and finalised in this step. However, this step does not highlight the role and importance of teaching method and its effect on the overall attainment of education objectives. Moreover, in the absence of any such mechanism, the development of highly practical and useful courses may become unproductive because the delivery of ideas and understanding along with use of different methods for putting across different ideas are those areas which have become highly critical for attaining the objective of higher education at the macro level. In this regard, it is important to highlight that from the perspective of students, the courses may not be as much important as are the delivery of lectures and communication methods of teachers which are used in the classes. Moreover, this gap has serious ramifications for the students as they are one who directly faces the consequences of improper teaching methods. Subsequently, they lose grades and fail perform well in class exercises and in final examinations as well. When the role of the QAA is closely analysed, it can be easily deduced that it has only developed its reputation for monitoring the academic activities of the academic institutions whereas no focus and concentration has been given to the concerns of students. Graph 05: QAA Quality Code Source: (QAA, 2015) QAA quality code consists of expectations which are to be satisfied by the academic institutions in the United Kingdom (QAA, n.d.). the QAA quality code is considerably detailed as it entails all macro and micro issues and policies relating to the academic institutions. Fundamentally, this code is consisted of three parts: Part A, part B and part C. Each part has its own further sub parts which make it compact for obtaining certain academic objectives. For example, Part A is consisted of qualifications frameworks, characteristics statements; credit frameworks and subject benchmark statements whereas part B is comprised of eleven chapters; each one highlighting the different expectations of the UK higher education framework. Additionally, part C expounds information pertaining to higher education provision. More importantly, the significance of this code can be understood by the fact that the QAA use this code as benchmarks while carrying out a review process. However, this framework has not detailed about those issues which do not come under any part of the quality code. For example, the quality code has not clearly defined its role in situations where students are financially unable to pay their academic dues and they require government and other sponsorship for further continuing their studies. Within this context, it is important to highlight that the code’s part A has credit frameworks. And it is assumed that this framework is specifically designed to support the needy students. However, the QAA mandate has no such clear-cut provision authorising the agency to provide the financial assistance to the needy students. Under this situation, the ultimate objective of the agency, which is to enhance to academic standards in the UK, will not achieved if the framework has no provision or assistance programme for supporting the needy students. However, this code has not provided any operational overview mechanism which is generally applied by the QAA review officials. Generally, every operational overview mechanism is required to have the support of training and development session which enable the staff member to carry out their routine job work. This framework enables the review staff members to get accustomed with the current changes in the review process besides upgrading their review and assessing skills. However, the QAA has not provided any framework helpful for improving the performance and working of the QAA staff members. At the same time, it is also pertinent to highlight that this code has not provided any sampling techniques which are normally applied to review the different policies and practices of academic institutions. In this regard, it is important to mention that every academic institution has its own admission and subsequent academic policy. Under this situation, it is highly essential that the reviewer should be in a position to understand the different types of admission policies and other policies which adherence to the UK’s higher education standards. Graph 06: QAA Partners Source: (QAA, 2015) This graph represents the interaction of QAA with its partners relating to the academic policy construction and attainment of education objectives. The QAA has developed partnership relationship with the mentioned partners in the graph 06, highlighting the understanding of the QAA towards achieving the objectives of others related to this field. For example, the QAA has also developed interaction with the employers for ensuring that the students and employers coordinate in a way to satisfy each other’s expectations. In this regard, it is important to highlight that the role of the employers is of crucial importance as they are the one who ultimately use the theoretical knowledge and understanding of the students in the practical business and organizational settings. And their coordination and understanding is highly relevant for them as this would leave little room for wastage of intellectual skills of students. More specifically, the QAA works with the employers to understand their current and future expectations from the academic institutions including communication, knowledge and computer skills. after knowing their expectations, the QAA also reviews its current academic policy standards and update them along with the expectations of the employers. At the same time, QAA also works with the professional bodies, such as ACCA and other similar professional bodies. The purpose of this networking is to know their professional standards and change taking place in their academic areas should also be incorporated in the quality standards as well. Additionally, the QAA also interacts with the students for knowing their expectations and other academic and institution-related issues. Overall, the objective of this partnership to take onboard all the stakeholders who are directly or indirectly involved in the academic activities. However, there are certain issues that have not been appropriately addressed by the QAA. For example, the QAA has not defined the role of professional bodies and employers especially in the development and design of the academic standards. Graph 07: Student Engagement at QAA Source: (QAA, 2015). This is the most important graph relating to the student engagement taking place at the QAA. Since it is the prime responsibility of the QAA to assist and support students especially for those issues which directly or indirectly affect student and their learning process. keeping this view in mind, the above graph has been developed to highlight the internal process and the role and contribution of different stakeholders who are involved at different levels of this learning and understand process. The student engagement process begins with a student learning issue. Subsequently, the student learning issue reaches the QAA management; after receiving the issue, the QAA management forwards the issue to the QAA student engagement team after determining its relevance and applicability within the mandate of the QAA. Subsequently, the team evaluates the issue and endeavours to reach an outcome. At this stage, the team’s outcome determines whether the issue has greater or general scope or is only related to an individual case. Subsequently, if the case is related to an individual issue, the team will provide individual support. After determining the general applicability of the issue, team interacts with the National Union of Students (NUS), which is an external stakeholder. However, the mandate of QAA’s student engagement team and NUS largely remains the same. After this step, both start collaborating on the issue and to discuss the further course of action on the issue. In this regard, it is important to mention that a support of financier is always sought when the issue is more important. Here, the role of financier is only to provide funds after evaluating its usefulness for students and student community. Subsequently, issue-related policy is developed and implemented as well. Comment and observations on inadequacies and recommendations to the QAA The QAA has not provided any clear-cut direction and strategy for overcoming the problem of training and development of QAA staff. Normally, in every organization, it is a standard that the organization takes the requirements and job description of the staff members into account and takes the relevant measures for improving the performance of staff. Providing training and development sessions enables the staff members to improve their related skills and know-how so as to increase their performance and productivity as well. This increase in performance and productivity is not only beneficial to the employees but also useful for the organization as it enhances the overall performance of the organization as well. However, when this is applied to the QAA, the subsequent result highlights that the organization has no specified and pre-determined objective for developing and enhancing the skills of the staff members. Under this situation, there are various ramifications which cannot be avoided under any condition. First, reviewing requires different set of skills including critical approach in which validity of certain approaches is challenged and countered by asking highly critical questions. For example, if an academic institution is using unofficial methods for the purpose of student admission including it is using some prohibited methods as well. Under this situation, it is the responsibility of the QAA reviewing staff to inquire about this policy and understand the reasons behind this policy. More clearly, it is not possible for the QAA reviewing staff to audit every admission in an academic institution. And in order to investigate possible violations of academic standards, the QAA staff would be required to carry out the process of sampling in which different number and size of admission cases would be taken into account for ascertaining the institution has fully complied with the national admission academic standards. In this regard, it is important to mention that the QAA has not provided any framework or policy addressing this very core issue which is highly relevant and essential for effectively performing the routine job of review. In the absence of any such method, the QAA staff members would not be in a position to detect anomalies and deviations in the current policies of the academic institutions and that would in the long run make it difficult to obtain the objective of the academic standards and quality improvement as well. Lack of teaching strategies focus is also a major loophole in the QAA review process. The quality code has one or two chapters relating to the aspect of teaching and learning. When the perspective and requirement of academic activity is taken into account, it can be easily understood that the prime objective of any academic activity is to improve learning and learning is imporved when teaching and methods of teaching are highly productive and useful enough to encourage students to easily grasp the gist of any topic. However, lack of sufficient focus on this aspect clearly highlights that the QAA has not been able to provide much needed focus to the students and their needs as well. If the whole picture of the academic activity and role of the QAA is taken into account, the student has the most importance when they are compared with other stakeholders. And this importance is mainly provided by the fact that the students are prime and major stakeholders and it is the responsibility of the QAA to look after, ensure and safeguard their interests. Among other interests, the students have interests to receive quality teaching from teachers as this enables them to consume minimum time for understanding and retaining any topic and its related aspects. However, the QAA has totally ignored the expectations of the students. And this must not be the case. As a result, it is highly recommended that the QAA should also focus on the expectations and requirements of the students. And this can only be done through incorporating the expectations of students into the academic standards. Within this context, it is relevant to highlight that the QAA should devise strategy for understanding the expectations of students. For example, one way to do so is to survey students by asking them to highlight their major issues that they encounter in their class. Though this survey, the QAA will be in a better position to understand the current class based issues that haunt students. Subsequently, the QAA should develop a framework in a form of recommendations which should be sent to the relevant regulatory authority for assessing their practical implementation. Additionally, it has been observed that the QAA overemphasises on academic institutions conduct and activity. It looks that the QAA works on behalf of an academic regulator assigned and authorized to supervise the conduct of the academic institutions. However, this type of demeanour puts negative effect on the overall perception and role of the QAA. As a result, it is highly recommended that the QAA should only perform its role of monitoring and recommending changes in the academic infrastructure. Evaluation of fit of selected package DFD was highly relevant and effective package for highlighting and representing the different activities and relationship of different stakeholders and processes in the QAA. In this regard, it is important to mention that the QAA is fundamentally a monitoring body and has been authorised to monitor and provide recommendations to the related parties. In other words, the QAA is not a commercial organization in which normally different departments work and each has different mandate than other member departments. As a result, the QAA is only restricted to review the academic institutions and their adherence to education standards. Moreover, the QAA has more theoretical framework in which quality code and other standards are given and the QAA staff members are authorised to ensure the compliance of the academic institutions with the benchmarks. More specifically, the quality code details all those benchmarks which are developed by the QAA in association with other partners. At the same time, the QAA has developed relationships with other partners as reflected by the graph 06 in which employers, students, professional bodies and quality enhancement network are main participants. However, it is pertinent to highlight that the QAA has only mentioned their names but has not detailed the mechanism which is followed internally with these members. As a result, the provided model and package has only used the relevant graphs for highlighting their role and coordination with one another. More importantly, the QAA only works to receive feedback and perspective of different stakeholders. For this purpose, it is assumed that the QAA may be using the telephone or emails as a way to communicate and interact with these partners. However, the chosen package and the mandate of the QAA are very much compatible with each other. For example DFD provides how data flows from aspect to another aspect besides highlighting the role of any processes and its significance for the overall process. Keeping this view in mind, the QAA has certain standards and quality benchmarks which are largely reflected as the guidelines detailing processes and steps required for any set of activities. For example, the quality code has a number of chapters in which each chapter has its own mandate and process as well. However, the QAA website and other files downloaded from the website do not further detail about the processes and sub headings and topics involved in the process. More importantly, the website of the QAA is only restricted to provide descriptive information and processes which are nothing more than a single step. Keeping this view in mind, the DFD has been chosen to represent the descriptive information in a proper and effective way. At the same time, it is also pertinent to highlight that the QAA website only does not detail the steps that it carries out while conducting review of the different academic institutions. Under this situation, it was reasonable to use DFD as it does not require complex use of information but simple and understandable information is sufficient for highlighting the objective of any organization. At the same time, it is also relevant to mention that the QAA’s role as an organization is only restricted to qualitative aspect of human endeavour. In other words, the QAA reviews do not take into account the quantitative information or data which are normally used in such models. Due to the use of qualitative information in the QAA, it was assumed that the use of DFD would be appropriate and reasonable to highlight the information and processes of QAA through this model. At the same time, the QAA has limited but important stakeholders as mentioned in the graph 06. These stakeholders interact with the QAA for the purpose of developing and implementing the effective mechanism for obtaining the academic objectives. However, the stakeholders and specific objective relating to the academic quality standards have not been provided. And in the absence of any such information, it is very difficult to highlight and assess the value and significance of interaction of these stakeholders through using any package. Only availability of names of stakeholders is not sufficient enough to draw more complex pictures through using this model. References Grove, J. (2015). QAA ‘no match’ for rapid change in higher education sector. Retrieved: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/qaa-no-match-for-rapid-change-in-higher-education-sector/2016251.article McGhee, P. (2014). What has QAA ever done for UK Universities? A lot, actually. The Guardian, Retrieved: http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/oct/20/qaa-uk-university-review-critics Morgan, J. (2015). Private colleges, visa licence suspended as BIS and QAA launch inquiries. Retrieved: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/private-colleges-visa-licence-suspended-as-bis-and-qaa-launch-inquiries/2018746.article QAA About Us, (n.d.). About QAA. Retrieved: http://www.qaa.ac.uk/en Read More