No doubt there are detractors who cringe at the prospect of connecting the term customer service with an institution of higher education. Some may consider the term demeaning. However, given the college funding crisis and current economic climate, a quality customer service strategy is a prudent adjunct to any marketing activity undertaken. It is…

Soon after AskALibrarian, Florida's Statewide Virtual Reference Desk, began to offer Chat Reference to the public in 2003, a Quality Assurance Workgroup was established to ensure that the service patrons received would be friendly, accurate, and adequate. To make certain that best practices were used in answering the real time questions, two…

In this article, we briefly review the etiology of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and describe the most current scientifically supported theory about the nature of this disorder. Based on the research literature, several organizations have established standards of care for its diagnosis and treatment, which involves a multimodal…

Transdisciplinarity has been a veritable mantra, especially in the humanities and social sciences, for twenty years or more. Yet academic structures and research application requirements still struggle to come to grips with cross-boundary research and teaching. Making universities more trans-discipline-friendly is a tricky task, however. As Wendy…

Change orders. The words can turn the stomachs of administrators. Horror stories about change orders create fear and distrust among school officials, designers and builders. Can change orders be avoided? If car manufacturers can produce millions of intricately designed vehicles, why can't the same quality control be achieved on a construction…

In November 2005, UNESCO-CEPES organized a conference on Private Higher Education in Europe and Quality Assurance and Accreditation from the Perspective of the Bologna Process Objectives. Thirteen country reports and a comparative analysis study were commissioned for this specific initiative. The countries included in the project were: Albania,…

This is the third in a series of policy reports on the results of a four-year study of America's education schools. This report focuses on the need for quality education research and on the preparation of scholars and researchers who conduct such research. Approximately two decades into a school improvement movement, education research is assuming…

This booklet aims to provide policy advice and support to decision-makers and managers in the area of quality assurance in higher education. In order to do so, the authors describe and discuss major issues that decision-makers in charge of quality assurance need to consider for the creation or development of an external quality assurance (EQA)…

This article reports on a case study of the e-learning production unit at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Phase 1 of the study, completed in 2003, was the design and development of a process-based quality management system for web-supported learning (WSL) using a basic ISO 9000 approach (University of Pretoria, 2003). The second phase,…

Over the last decade the proportion of students in higher education obtaining aggregate marks over 60 per cent has steadily increased. Whilst standards of learning and teaching may have improved due to the existence of quality assurance agencies and the efforts of individual higher education institutions a significant factor remains that could…

This paper is a case study of the emergence of an evaluation culture in the public sector and particularly in education in Ireland over the past three decades. It suggests that the emergence of this culture was strongly influenced by external factors, particularly the European Union (EU), and to a lesser but significant degree, the Organisation…

Purpose: This paper sets out to examine methods that can be used to enhance the quality and consistency of dissertation assessment. Design/methodology/approach: The paper includes a review of literature on quality, consistency and criteria of dissertation assessment to highlight the current practices in higher education. A case study approach was…

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to report on an in-depth exploration of service quality in an Information Technology service department in a Higher Education Institute (HEI) and to evaluate the instrument used. Design/methodology/approach: The study surveys customers using the SERVQUAL instrument, which is one of the most widely used and…

Purpose: This paper aims to report the process and outcomes of a case study which introduced internal evaluation procedures into academic departments of a university in Iran. The purpose of the study was to identify what benefits could arise from using internal evaluation, and what obstacles existed to its successful introduction.…

This article deals with the investigation of the psychometric quality and constructs validity of algebra word problems generated by means of a schema-based version of the automatic min-max approach. Based on review of the research literature in algebra word problem solving and automatic item generation this new approach is introduced as a…