Maintaining the quality and comparability of qualifications has become a major priority for vocational education and training (VET) systems world-wide, especially for those countries which have decentralised assessment and reporting systems. In the absence of external examinations, one policy solution to align the assessment standards of different…

Programme evaluation is essential for quality assurance in education. In this paper, we describe our evaluation strategy for the first year of a new medical programme. Although we used multiple methods in the evaluation, the use of the focus group method was core. This paper reports our experiences of focus groups for this purpose. We describe the…

The "PISA 2009 Technical Report" describes the methodology underlying the PISA 2009 survey. It examines additional features related to the implementation of the project at a level of detail that allows researchers to understand and replicate its analyses. The reader will find a wealth of information on the test and sample design,…

This Toolkit forms part of the project entitled "Time for a New Paradigm in Education: Student-Centred Learning" (T4SCL), jointly led by the European Students' Union (ESU) and Education International (EI). This is an EU-funded project under the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP) administered by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture…

The marching trend of the new economic order has generated a new capsule of SIX SIGMA as a unified approach to process excellence. The tests reveal that it has transformed some of the most successful companies in the world like Motorola, GE etc. It is activated as an approach to aiming at the target by changing the culture of a company, involving…

This study applies the "Personnel Evaluation Standards" of the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation to the procedures, practices, and related components of a school's staff evaluation program to determine the program's effectiveness. Evaluators sought answers to questions including the extent to which the intended structures and…

E-learning in the European Higher Education Area has stampeded its way to the foreground of the Quality Assurance (QA) forum, and has become a key issue among quality assurance agencies and institutions in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Because internet-based learning is currently such a relevant topic, there is a dire need for the…

Reviews lessons learned from early experiments with academic audits in the United Kingdom, Sweden, New Zealand, and Hong Kong in areas such as: focus of audits, selection and training of audit teams, nature of audit self-studies, conduct of audit visits, audit reports, and audit follow-up and enhancement activities. Suggests guidelines for design…

Reports the implementation of a quality assurance program in Colorado mental health facilities, designed to help managers know how they were doing on operational issues. The program was simple, low cost, and easy to implement. All levels of management found it a useful tool. (Author/WAS)

This paper outlines a framework for documenting the impact of the Administration on Developmental Disabilities' University Affiliated Programs (UAP) on three domains: clients and their families, systems of services or higher education, and leveraging of resources. The paper identifies characteristics associated with successful UAP development and…

Demonstration programs and social experiments are often subject to sophisticated, controlled evaluations. An important factor that is not subject to control, and sometimes even goes unobserved, is overall program site quality. Site quality can be observed in process evaluations, but these tend to be expensive. This paper describes an alternative…

Focuses on critical factors for success for organizations planning to use upward feedback systems to drive organizational change. Highlights include assessment of organizational readiness, use of an appropriate feedback instrument, consistent implementation, effective communication and training, quality control, and continuous improvement.…

Describes the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program's implementation of an evaluation research-driven quality assurance process for Florida's juvenile justice educational programs. Reviews the literature on juvenile justice educational practices and describes the educational quality assurance standards and annual modifications that draw…

Presents a model for evaluating performance-based instruction that is intended for use by human resource development/performance technology professionals. Highlights include goal setting; program design and implementation; evaluating the use and impact of training; instructional tasks, including sequencing; quality of student products; and…

A project was conducted to improve the productivity and efficiency of 10 manufacturers by providing workplace literacy instruction to workers lacking basic skills required for their jobs, and to improve the capability of educational programs to meet the basic skill needs of the manufacturing industry by developing an evaluation manual for basic…