Millard Parkinson

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Millard Parkinson St Helens College QAA
Specialist Subject Reviewer
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Contacts

• Gillian Hayes, Deputy Director (Reviews)
• Ian Welch, IQER Method Coordinator
• Katie Akerman, IQER Deputy Method Coordinator
• www.qaa.ac.uk
• QAA Gloucester Office 01452 557000

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Integrated quality and enhancement review an
overview
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IQER

• Is
• designed specifically for
• colleges in England which provide higher
  education
• appropriate for HEFCE directly,
• indirectly and consortium-funded
• provision
• comparable with external review processes used
  within higher education institutions

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• The aims of IQER
• Are
• to assist colleges in building their capacity for
  managing their responsibilities for quality and
  the delivery of academic standards
• to assist HEFCE in meeting its statutory
  obligations
• to allow QAA to provide independent verification
  of quality and standards

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IQER should reduce burden

• by
• using existing college documentation
• drawing on evidence from Ofsted/ALI college
  inspections and also by providing evidence for
  inspection
• providing published evidence for an awarding
  institutions institutional or collaborative
  provision audit
• working within the context of each colleges
  partnership agreements

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Dialogue with colleges

• Each College will have
• the same coordinator throughout the IQER cycle
• An invitation to nominate members of staff as
  institutional nominees (INs).
• An invitation to nominate a member of staff as a
  Summative review (SR) facilitator

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IQER activities

• These include
• two interrelated processes DE and SR
• colleges self-evaluation
• reviewers desk-based analysis and evaluation of
  documentary evidence
• reviewers visit(s) to the college to meet staff,
  students and other stakeholders

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Core questions are integral to both DE and SR

• Core question one Academic standards
• Core question two Quality of learning
  opportunities
• Core question three Accuracy and completeness of
  information

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Important features of IQER

• In common with all QAA reviews
• the Academic Infrastructure provides a framework
  of reference
• students experiences are central
• self-evaluation precedes visiting
• reviewers are peers
• evaluations, recommendations and judgements are
  evidence-based

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Students role in IQER

• They participate actively
• in both DEs and SRs
• in discussions between the Coordinator and
  college about the IQER process
• in confidential meetings with the reviewers
• by submitting an optional students written
  submission

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Developmental engagements

• Each college has
• From none to two over five years
• The numbers of DEs is determined according to
  student FTEs and risk

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Developmental engagement focus

• These includes
• consideration of the three core questions for
  each DE
• student assessment as the theme of the first DE
  in each college
• lines of enquiry to help answer the three core
  questions
• a college preferred theme for any second/third DE

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Developmental engagement team

• Teams have
• typically four members, but fewer for colleges
  with less than 100 HEFCE funded FTEs
• usually a Coordinator, a reviewer and two INs
• a second reviewer, if the college cannot provide
  two INs

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Developmental engagement outcomes

• The outcomes are
• an oral report
• written report, not published, including an
  action plan

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Summative review

• Is based on
• one SR for each college during the five-year
  cycle
• All HEFCE-funded provision in the college
• Consider action of the three core questions

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Summative review team

• Has
• typically four members, but fewer for colleges
  with less than 100 FTE students funded by HEFCE
• no IN and is assisted by facilitator from the
  College

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Summative review judgements and evaluation

• These are
• judgements of confidence, limited confidence or
  no confidence for core questions one and two and
• an evaluation for core question three

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Summative review outcomes

• an oral report
• a written report including an action plan
  containing judgements and evaluation
• not published until IQER goes live

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• How should a College and its awarding bodies work
  together in IQER?It is important to stress that
  IQER is concerned with colleges responsibilities
  for the management and delivery of higher
  education in the context of their partnership
  arrangements with awarding bodies, and not with
  the responsibilities of awarding bodies. That
  being said, awarding bodies may be involved in
  IQER in some way.

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What additional support would you expect from the
University in preparing for IQER?

• This needs to be agreed by the College and its
  awarding body or bodies according to local
  circumstances. Where a College has a mature
  and/or evidently effective partnership with a
  particular awarding body, then both the College
  and the awarding body may feel it is not
  appropriate to involve the awarding body far
  beyond giving it the opportunity to comment on
  the self-evaluation. Where a partnership is
  relatively new and/or has not been the subject of
  other review activity, or where it has been the
  source of concern to recent review activity, then
  it may be appropriate for the awarding body to be
  more actively involved in IQER.

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What additional support would you expect from
the University in preparing for IQER?

• Those representatives of HEIs who were present
  pointed out that most if not all HEIs would seek
  active involvement in the process as the quality
  guarantors of the provision. The HEIs added that
  a negative outcome (expression of limited or no
  confidence) could damage their reputations and
  commercial interests and this was another
  important reason for them to be involved.