A quality management system is an essential and mandatory instrument for maritime higher education institutions mandated by the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification, and Watchkeeping for Seafarers. To design an effective quality management system, it is strongly recommended to take the most comprehensive model of the…

Reporting standards and critical appraisal tools serve as beacons for researchers, reviewers, and research consumers. Parallel to existing guidelines for researchers to report and evaluate group-comparison studies, single-case experimental (SCE) researchers are in need of guidelines for reporting and evaluating SCE studies. A systematic search was…

This article discusses the problem of quality in the production of language tests in the context of Italian language examinations. The concept of quality is closely related to the application of stated standards and related procedures. These standards, developed over the last thirty years, are mainly related to the concepts of the accountability…

The Knowledge and Human Development Authority in Dubai has developed an innovative system of quality assurance designed to ensure that the appropriate international standards are being maintained through this cross-border method of delivery. This paper describes and provides the strategic rationale for this new model of "validation" and…

This report is the third of a three-phase research study of teacher professional learning opportunities in the United States. In this third phase of the research, the authors conducted case studies of four professionally active states to get a deeper look at the policy frameworks that support professional development in those states. These…

European tertiary education became an important topic of the main leaders of the world academia a decade ago, when 29 European countries voluntarily signed the Bologna Declaration of 1999. This intergovernmental European initiative of educational reform, known as the Bologna Process, defines a common framework for higher education systems, and…

Emerging concerns about quality of e-learning products and services animated a project in Canada to create quality standards that derived primarily from the needs of consumer, that could be used to guide the development and choice of e-learning at all levels of education and training, and that could be implemented in a simple manner. A set of…

The Commonwealth of Learning is proud to partner with the Sri Lankan Ministry of Higher Education and UNESCO to produce this "Quality Assurance Toolkit for Distance Higher Education Institutions and Programmes". The Toolkit has been prepared with three features. First, it is a generic document on quality assurance, complete with a…

Purpose: The paper describes the purpose of and strategies for conducting post-occupancy evaluations (POEs) as a method for assessing school building performance. Set within the larger context of global efforts to develop and apply common indicators of school building quality, the authors describe research conducted within the newest generation of…

This article outlines a methodology for characterising features of programme-level assessment environments so that the relationship between features of the assessment environment and students' learning response can be studied. The methodology was developed through the detailed case study of nine undergraduate degree programmes: one in each of…

Offers a case study of how the English department at Mary Washington College constructed over a period of years a credible process for assessing its undergraduate major. Explains and critiques that process and the procedures the department has come to use. (TB)

The massification of university education is being replicated in many emergent and newly-industrialised countries, as universities from older economies have begun to offer educational services overseas. Initially, these were small-group programmes, but in recent years many more subjects, programmes and degrees have been taught offshore to…

The "Setting the scene" deliverable of the QMPP project (www.qmpp.net) has been authored by Mr. Ari-Matti Auvinen (HCI Productions Oy) and many QMPP project partners. In addition to the definition of the scope of the project, it includes also a good list of references to the literature of user-generated content as well as good web links…

This study describes the process by which a circuit board manufacturing company became certified in an international quality control program known as ISO 9002. Particular attention is paid to how quality documents were made and used in actual practice and to the relationship between these standardized procedures (official literacies) and…

This account of internal audit is set within the context of higher education in the UK and a fictitiously named Riverbank University. The study evaluates the recent introduction of "Internal Academic Audit" to the University and compares the process with that of the internationally recognized ISO 19011 Guidelines for Auditing Quality…