2.  Background & context of Durban University of Technology (DUT)  Quality promotion & assurance  Quality enhancement  Countdown & blow-up factors  Collaborative relationships  The quest for the Holy grail…

3.  A merger of two technikons  influence of history  unintended consequences  impact of merger  prevailing institutional culture

4.  Establishment of the CQPA & approach adopted  what’s in a name?  our approach: resonance with ‘festinare lente’ (Hodgkinson & Brown, 2003)  Retro- and prospective QA  Model for QPA

5.  Retrospective and prospective quality assurance (Biggs, 2001)  retrospective – looking back on achievements & making judgments accordingly  prospective – focus on teaching & learning, congruent with developmental, facilitative and transformative approaches

6. Plan Act Resource Allocation Strategic Plan Enrolment Plan Academic Plan Inst. Audit Improvement Plan External Review Internal ImproveSTUDENT A model for quality promotion and assurance

7.  ‘quality as transformation is central to the development of educationally-oriented models’ (Srikanthan & Dalrymple, 2007)  ‘education managers and academics still do not understand that QA is something you do, not wrangle about, that to have a positive effect it needs to be motivated by the desire of the whole organisation, including support staff and students to create the best student learning experiences, the best research within the available resources’ (Doherty, 2008)

8.  Quality teaching transforms students’ perceptions of their world, and the way they go about applying the knowledge to real world problems; it also transforms teachers’ conceptions of their role as teacher and the culture of the institution itself (Biggs 2001)  Dissolve the barriers between academic, administrative and support staff through discussion and sharing of information and through joint ownership of problems and solutions (Hodgkinson & Brown 2003)

9.  Is a single definition of QE possible?  DUT: definition in the strategic goals (2009)  build on established foundations for QA  lead to transformative change  grounded in a systems-level, collaborative approach to understanding and improving the quality of the entire student experience  HEA definition (2008)  process of taking deliberate steps at institutional level to improve the quality of learning opportunities

10. Countdown: plan into action  Clarity of direction  Leadership & support  Linkages & collaborative relationships  Foundation for QP & A  Maturity in internal & external environment for QA Blow-up: efforts eroded or destroyed  Complexity of prevailing cultures  QA legacy  Resistance to change – comfort zone of current intellectual habits & routines  Cave mentality Collaborative? Relationships

11. QE Collaborative relationships Quality improvement of LTA practices Reviews; accreditation; feedback processes Curriculum design; pedagogy

12. The biggest challenge of all: How to win the hearts and minds of the ordinary academic, how to shift the perception of quality assurance from one of external policing or central control to one of internalised, individual, professional academic responsibility, bringing with it the wish, intention and means to do even better by one’s students. Will this take another ten years? – at least. Holy grails do sometimes take a while to find (Williams 2008).