Community of Practice finding common inner space through Quality Pursuit

Academic Standards in Higher Education are critical to the accreditation of courses and institutions nationally. An infrastructure gap hinders coherent and consistent embedding of Standards into curriculum such that quality enhancement (QE) activities are not always consistently prompted and reported. Therefore good practice in QE activities are not always available to the sector. Scarcity of resources, time and funding reinforces the need to share expertise.

Our strategic CoP 360 which grew from peer learning circle (PLC) roots and 18 months of dedication from its team members is committed to unearthing these pockets of good practice and facilitating the sharing of QE expertise across the sector. This presentation will outline the activities undertaken by the CoP in 2014 in preparation for a developing our work into a national project. Activities have included undertaking a literature review, developing a national research collaboration, and applying for an Office for Learning and Teaching grant in the coming year.

The CoP utilized google forms to carry out a collaborative literature review using a pre-designed template. The literature review provides a solid evidence base and underpins the method for our proposed research project. This will be supported with findings from a sector wide survey around current QE issues and pilot studies of the six segment Quality Pursuit framework. The segments include: Purpose (e.g. internal QE or accreditation), Intended Learning Outcomes, Curriculum Mapping, Collecting Evidence, Benchmarking and Review, and Closing the Loop (actions to improve).