The primary responsibility for evaluation and review of educational programs rests with the faculties and departments. Judgments about the curriculum should be made by experts in the relevant fields; the long-established principles of peer review will form the basis for the university's systems of quality assessment. However, these processes should be informed by more regular and systematic canvassing of student opinion than has been the case in the past, particularly in relation to the quality of teaching and learning. The role of the university is to ensure that faculty procedures are in place to ensure that the processes of evaluation and review are rigorous and sound, and that there is a reasonable degree of consistency across the institution.
Review of individual subjects is a continuous process and is already an integral part of the operations of departments and faculties. This usually takes the form of informal discussions among staff at the conclusion of a year or semester. It is appropriate that this process remains internal and relatively informal, but, as a general principle, such evaluation should cover the quality of assessed work, the pattern of results and feedback from students, both formal and informal. It may also include peer review and advice from relevant professional and community groups.
As one important element in this process of continuous evaluation, student questionnaires shall be used regularly to provide feedback about all subjects taught in the university. Experience suggests that such evaluations should not be conducted every year, but the appropriate interval is best determined by faculties. It may differ by year level. Faculties shall decide on an appropriate schedule and notify the Education Committee of their decisions. Departments shall design questionnaires appropriate to their activities, drawing on an item-bank established by the Professional Development Centre (in consultation with the Monash Distance Education Centre), with a small core of items which is common to all. This will allow for disciplinary differences in approaches to teaching while ensuring some comparability.
The subject evaluation system shall be developed as a separate but parallel system to Monquest, which is voluntary and has the different focus of providing individual staff members with evidence about their teaching performance, to be used as they wish in applications for promotion, along with other forms of evidence. Subject evaluation questionnaires shall be administered by departments and processed by the Teaching Evaluation Unit, located within the Professional Development Centre. The results of these evaluations shall be available to the staff teaching the course and to subject coordinators; summaries of the results shall be available to heads of departments, for discussion at departmental meetings, to deans and, through the Education Committee, to the Academic Board.
The purpose of this evaluation system is to provide staff with information which will help them to improve the subjects they are teaching. Most of the interpretation and discussion of results, and the analysis of what actions should be taken in response to this feedback, will occur at the subject level, as part of the broader process of continuous review and improvement. The Professional Development Centre will continue to offer advice and support to individual staff members and teaching teams on evaluating and improving teaching programs and practices.
However, it is appropriate for the processes of review to be monitored at other levels of responsibility in the university. Subject coordinators shall be asked to write brief annual reports, outlining the results of staff reviews of subjects, presenting and commenting on pass rates and grade distributions and including summaries of the results of student evaluations in the years in which these have been conducted. They should also outline any proposals for change. These reports shall be submitted to heads of departments and discussed at departmental meetings where appropriate. Heads of departments shall in turn provide a summary report on their departments' subjects to deans, with a description of actions taken and the planned implementation of recommendations to enhance the quality of the programs. Deans shall draw together this material and comment on patterns in an annual report to Academic Board, to be presented in written form and discussed in a brief oral presentation to the board, followed by questions and discussion. The deans' reports shall be considered in detail by the Education Committee.
To supplement these processes of continuous informal evaluation which are an integral part of effective teaching, the university will establish a more formal system of regular reviews of departments and faculties, conducted by external reviewing panels. This will involve an extension of the existing review system which operates presently on an irregular basis (though it should be noted that the faculties of Arts and Science have established their own systems of rolling five-yearly reviews of departments). Full guidelines for the conduct of reviews will be developed in the near future; the following broad outline is proposed for consideration at this stage.
A seven-year review cycle is proposed for faculties; multi-department faculties will be requested to establish their own cycles for reviews of departments, if they have not already done so. These formal reviews will consider all the operations of the faculties and departments, in the areas of teaching, research, community service and administration. Given the university's commitment to the interdependence of these activities, they should be evaluated together.
The Education Committee's concern is primarily with teaching activities, but it will receive from the faculties the reports of the reviews and discuss with deans the implementation of recommendations made by the panel in relation to educational programs. There will be provision for confidential sections of reports which are available only to the relevant head of department, dean and vice-chancellor (or his/her delegate).
The university guidelines on reviews will cover the following matters:
The terms of reference will include detailed criteria for assessing the effectiveness of educational programs. The following checklist from the AVCC Guidelines for quality assurance in university course development and review (1992) will serve as a starting point.
Examination of each course in the context of the changes which have taken place since its development and/or last review will focus on:
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