Quality Enhancement of University Teaching and Learning

The challenge addressed by the international scholars and academic practitioners contributing to Quality Enhancement of University Teaching and Learning is how best to enhance the quality of university teaching and learning, and thereby generate a culture of quality in higher education. The book focuses on approaches to quality enhancement (QE), a process which has significant differences to the interrelated concept of quality assurance (QA), particularly in relation to aspirations for change. The contributors believe that the status quo is no longer a viable option if the role of higher education as a fundamental part of the knowledge (and wider) economy is to be safeguarded. Believing that the primary purpose of every institution’s quality enhancement work should be the improvement of students’ learning experiences, they argue that innovative QE initiatives offer better ways of handling students’ intricate learning processes than does a focus on QA paradigms. Higher education institutions (HEIs) need to establish quality enhancement frameworks that focus explicitly on the relationship between the activities of learning and teaching and students’ learning outcomes. All institutions need to follow approaches that seek out and value novel and effective practices and disseminate these where appropriate. Focusing on the dynamic and complex processes and relations that create their learning environments is necessary if HEIs are to move from cultures of compliance to cultures of enhancement. When successful, the outcome should be a culture where ownership of the institutional quality enhancement agenda extends down to the point of delivery. Since successful QE initiatives must always involve jointly the student, the teacher and the institution, the three sections of the anthology address the practice of QE in relation to each of these constituencies. Examples of quality enhancement in higher education from Australia, Belgium, Denmark, England, Finland, Iceland, Portugal, Scotland, and United Arab Emirates are presented, with each section starting from contributions offering microlevel approaches and progressing to those offering macrolevel perspectives.

Claus Nygaard is a professor of management education and the director of research at the Copenhagen Business School’s Learning Lab. His work has been published in leading journals, including Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, Higher Education, International Journal of Public Sector Management, and International Studies of Management & Organization. He is the coeditor of Learning in Higher Education: Contemporary Standpoints; Simulations, Games and Role Play in University Education; Student Engagement: Identity, Motivation, and Community; and Teaching Creativity—Creativity in Teaching. Nigel Courtney is an honorary senior visiting fellow at Cass Business School at City University London. He is a chartered engineer, a certified management consultant, and a certified IT professional. His firm, Courtney Consulting, has served the European Commission, the Higher Education Academy, London Underground, Transport for London, and the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. He is a coeditor of Teaching Creativity—Creativity in Teaching. Paul Bartholomew is a professor of learning and teaching at Birmingham City University and a coeditor of Student Engagement: Identity, Motivation and Community. Professor John Biggs is an Australian educational psychologist and novelist who developed the SOLO Taxonomy for assessing the quality of learning outcomes, and the model of constructive alignment for designing teaching and assessment. He is the author of four novels, the memoir Changing Universities, and coauthor of Teaching for Quality Learning at University.