Learning Our Lesson

In the context of the new era, the quality of higher education teaching has become an important indicator for measuring the overall level of higher education. Ideological and political education, as a crucial support for moral cultivation, plays an irreplaceable role in higher education teaching activities. However, current higher education institutions still face problems such as insufficient integration of ideological and political elements, a mismatch between teachers’ ideological and political education capabilities and their professional development needs, and inadequate reflection of ideological guidance in the teaching evaluation system during the process of improving teaching quality. Based on the perspective of ideological and political education, this paper systematically discusses the basic difficulties, principle requirements, and core pathways for enhancing teaching quality. It proposes innovative strategies including improving the curriculum ideological and political education system, building a high-quality teaching staff, and optimizing teaching organizational forms, aiming to provide theoretical reference and practical guidance for the high-quality development of higher education teaching.

Reflection is essential for professional development and improving teaching quality in higher education, yet faculty members often struggle with meaningful reflective practices. This quasi-experimental study was conducted at Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences (HUMS) with 30 faculty members who voluntarily participated. The intervention consisted of two phases: Phase 1 involved two workshops focused on Rolfe et al. (2001) reflective model (What, So What, Now What), while Phase 2 included a two-month mentorship program where participants engaged in guided reflections on real-life teaching challenges. The effectiveness of the intervention was assessed using Kirkpatrick’s Four-Level Model, including participant reaction, learning outcomes, behavioral changes, and improvements in reflective depth. The findings indicated a positive participants’ perceptions of reflection. The depth of reflective reports improved over time, with the percentage of participants achieving higher levels of reflection increasing from Phase 1 to Phase 2. The findings emphasize the crucial role of longitudinal support in fostering sustained engagement with reflection. Structured mentorship programs can significantly enhance reflective practice beyond the impact of short-term workshops, leading to long-term improvements in faculty development and teaching quality.

In Australia, in this decade, quality teaching in higher education has become a strongly politicised issue. My research deals with some of the discourses which have been used to define ‘quality teaching’ in documents and practices at the national site; from one University; and from extensive discussions with academics who are acknowledged as ‘good teachers’ within that University. Using critical post‐modernism and critical discourse analysis, I examined this material, searching for underlying value assumptions, current meanings, and contestations, spaces and omissions. My findings suggest that whilst there are a wide variety of definitions of quality, few address the complexity of teaching. Statements, particularly from the national and institutional sites call on and contribute to management discourses, whilst omitting connections between teaching, the teacher or student learning. These current discourses can be interpreted as either problems for academics, or opportunities to participate in the construction of new meanings of ‘quality teaching’.

Student perception of teaching quality in higher education

In 1992, the United Kingdom government introduced a formal system for the assessment of teaching quality in higher education, the Teaching Quality Assessment (TQA). One of the key aims of the TQA was to encourage continuous quality improvement in teaching and learning. This study analyses the experiences of senior staff, responsible for the management and development of quality in teaching and learning, and explores the perceived impact of the TQA, on the value and esteem of teaching. Utilising semi-structured interviews, conducted with senior academic personnel of the 13 Scottish universities, it was noted that senior management perceived difficulties in making judgements about the teaching aspect of academic work and were reluctant to promote staff on the basis of teaching performance. The respondents' statements further indicated that this reluctance was compounded by the continuing tension between teaching and research, in which research-based criteria took precedence over other matters. These findings are in line with previous research in the United States and Australia, which has suggested that the prioritisation of research may have created disincentives to the development of innovative teaching and learning processes. The TQA, in the United Kingdom, has fallen short of its goal of raising the profile of teaching, as an activity in higher education, primarily because competing demands for research output have taken precedence over attempts to improve teaching.

Bangladesh is crossing milestones in achieving sustainability in every sector and one of the most important sectors is the higher education sector. Thus, it is advisable to improve the quality of education in the environment by evaluating some parameters of service quality. This paper examines the quality of teaching in the higher education sector through continuing Professional Development (CPD) and examines the important role that teachers play in contributing to the development of the knowledge and values needed for teachers. However, since the study is on descriptive and analytical case studies and literature reviews based on reliable sources which shows that workshops and seminars are effective in most traditional modes has as proved to be insufficient for Coordination and evaluation of programs should be mandatory for professional development, which will help to maintain a positive environment with changing global situation. This paper identifies the definition, the dimension, the model, effectiveness, and types of CPD, the quality of service related to student satisfaction. The study helps to identify and assist in taking steps to address the lack of teaching quality whether teachers receive continuous professional development programs and whether such programs are adequate in our college.

This paper argues that, to manage the powerful combination of change forces currently bearing down on higher education (HE) around the world successfully, universities have be good at determining not only what needs to change in their current approaches to learning and teaching (LT • show how these lessons have been successfully applied to improve the quality and performance of LT and • provide a framework for the effective management of L&T quality improvements in all our universities. The paper is based on a keynote address given at the South African Association for Institutional Research Forum in October 2011 and the discussions that followed.

STEM Education intends to have Integrated Learning in the disciplines of Science, Technology, Mathematics and Mathematics to produce critical, innovative and creative students who contribute to the country's development. STEM education has a role not only as a channel to process and produce local skilled workers, even as a leader in the country's development economy. However, STEM education scenarios in Malaysia are dealing with various issues such as the lack of STEM teaching materials, the reduction in the number of students who continue study in STEM-related fields in the middle and tertiary rankings and low achievements in international level markers studies such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA ) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). These issues are related to one of the main challenges, namely STEM learning / teacher teaching quality that is not interesting and consistent and teacher quality in the STEM field. Increasing the quality of STEM learning, the quality of teacher teaching and the quality of teachers needs to be done as one of the proactive steps to strengthen STEM Education. If this effort is not carried out, the dictatorship of the country becomes incompetent in the global ranking and lags behind. This concept paper naturally discusses the issues and challenges of teacher factors in the education of STEM education and so on several reserves and initiatives to overcome the STEM learning challenges / teacher teaching quality that is not interesting and consistent and teacher quality is raised.

SEPTEMBER 2014 PLACEMENT ADS

Objectives This study aim to verify the HESQUAL model whether it is an effective evaluation tool for evaluating teaching and administrative service quality in Chinese higher education.
 Methods This study based on the current situation of higher education in China, and flexible application of evaluation index of the HESQUAL model, adopted a research method of holistic approach, extracting and conducted initial test on factors for evaluation of teaching and administrative service quality in Chinese higher education, and offered an elementary evaluation tool through literature research, in-depth interviews. The study initiated preliminary survey (N=562) and main survey (N=806) distributing questionnaires to the three categories of higher education stakeholders: university students, university teachers and university administrators. Furthermore, software of SPSS 25.0 and AMOS 21.0 tested the reliability and rationality of the evaluation tool through exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, and yielded the final evaluation tool and model.
 Results Foremost, through exploratory factor analysis, a 5 dimensions solution with 20 indicators of the special evaluation tool for evaluation teaching and administrative service quality in Chinese higher education with internal consistency (α=.972) was identified in the preliminary survey. Secondly, through confirmatory factor analysis proved their sound model fit (χ2/df=4.512; CFI=.967; TLI=.961; GFI=.910; RMSEA=.066), good convergent validity and discriminant validity.
 Conclusions It was concluded that the evaluation tool is an effective and reliable tool for teaching and administrative service quality in Chinese higher education. This conclusion is exploratory, especially joined the dimension of “Students’ Personal Growth Quality in the University at learning”, which has rarely been seen in previous studies. But in the in-depth interview, experts reached a consensus.

To solve the problems of great difficulty and low accuracy in the evaluation of physical education teaching results, an evaluation method of physical education teaching and training quality based on deep learning is proposed. The evaluation index system is constructed based on the teaching content, teaching attitude, teaching content, teaching method, and teaching effects that affect the teaching quality. After the influence factors of each index are quantified, the resolution coefficient of the index is dynamically taken, the index correlation relationship based on weight is established, and the score distribution and score progress are taken as the evaluation results. The test results show that the correlation coefficient between the evaluation result of the design method and the actual results is 0.9430, and the evaluation accuracy is 94.73%.

Evaluations of faculty members are widely used to identify excellent or substandard teaching performance. In order to enable such evaluations to be properly interpreted and used in faculty development, it is essential to understand the factors that influence resident doctors' (residents) evaluations of the teaching qualities of faculty members and their perceptions of faculty members as role-model specialists. We carried out a cross-sectional survey within a longitudinal study of the System for Evaluation of Teaching Qualities (SETQ) of clinical teachers. The study sample included 889 residents and 1014 faculty members in 61 teaching programmes spanning 22 specialties in 20 hospitals in the Netherlands. Main outcome measures included residents' (i) global and (ii) specific ratings of faculty member teaching qualities, and (iii) global ratings of faculty members as role-model specialists. Statistical analysis was conducted using adjusted multivariable logistic generalised estimating equations. In total, 690 residents (77.6%) completed 6485 evaluations of 962 faculty members, 848 (83.6%) of whom also self-evaluated. More recently certified faculty members, those who had attended a teacher training programme, and those who spent more time teaching than seeing patients or conducting research were more likely to score highly on most teaching qualities. However, faculty members who had undergone teacher training were less likely to be seen as role models (odds ratio [OR] 0.72, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.59-0.88). In addition, faculty members were evaluated slightly higher by male than female residents on core teaching domains and overall teaching quality, but were less likely to be seen as role models by male residents (OR 0.80, 95% CI 0.67-0.97). Lastly, faculty members had higher odds of receiving top scores in specific teaching domains from residents in the first 4 years of residency and were less likely to be considered as role models by more senior residents. Younger faculty members who dedicated more time to teaching, had attended a teacher training programme, and were evaluated by male residents in the early years of residency were more likely to receive higher scores for teaching performance.

What are the ramifications of current changes in the higher education landscape in the UK for the ways in which teaching staff perceive their teaching practices? What impact are funding cuts, increases in student fees and the concomitant increased workloads having on faculty morale? How might this influence ‘quality cultures’ in teaching in media, communications, cultural studies and related disciplines, and higher education more broadly? To investigate issues around teaching quality enhancement and teaching quality assurance in the changing higher education environment in the UK, we designed an innovative ‘Teaching Exchange’ (TE) workshop, which ran during 2010 and 2011 in Media and Communications departments at five diverse higher education institutions around England. Drawn from discussions with over 40 faculty members, this paper provides an account of how our TE workshop participants viewed the current structural constraints on teaching quality in regard to: (1) changing teaching loads, (2) the marketisation of degree programmes and (3) the internationalisation of student bodies without adequate support structures. In reporting on these challenges to quality in teaching, this paper contributes to the generation of alternatives to the existing top-down bureaucratisation of teaching quality control.

Teaching quality evaluation usually involves multiple influence factors with grey and uncertain information.This brings about limitations to effective evaluation of teaching quality in colleges and universities.Thus, this paper draws merits from previous research and proposes a teaching quality evaluation system and model for colleges and universities.First, based on real situations, grey categories of evaluation state for teaching quality are established.The definite weighted functions of grey category of evaluation state are confirmed.Specific steps of the teaching quality evaluation model based on grey clustering analysis are accounted for.Finally, a case study is introduced to verify the model.This model enlightens a new way to evaluate teaching quality in colleges and universities.

This study employed a mixed-method approach, with a predominance of quantitative analysis to probed user relevance of students’ evaluation of course learning outcomes for quality assurance in the teaching process at Mountains of the Moon University. Self-Administered online Questionnaires with kobo toolbox were used to specifically answer the following question: What is the relevance of students’ evaluation of course learning outcomes (problem solving skills, critical thinking skills, leadership skills, effective communication), as an aspect of quality teaching at Mountains of the Moon University? The study employed a case study design and respondents comprised of 170 undergraduate students in both second and third year and 13 post graduate students at least in their second semester of study. Collected data using online questionnaires with KoBo tool box and documentary review, were analyzed using SPSS. Findings confirm the reliability of SETs as tools for quality assurance in teaching, highlighting the importance of focusing on learning outcomes and quantifiable performance indicators to develop effective SET tools. Designing of Teaching and learning assessment tools has to be guided by clear objectives developed by the Bloom Taxonomy action verbs; that should be used in designing appropriate learning outcomes. The insights emphasize that good teaching should focus on appropriate learning outcomes and that SETs are reliable tools for measuring teaching quality in higher education. Quantifiable performance indicators are essential for developing effective SET tools, aligning with quality assurance policies. The study recommends that, regulatory bodies should benchmark with the findings in this study as a basis for building candid evaluation of teaching guidelines for Higher Education Institutions.