Higher Education Quality Assurance Policy Realization Framework: Special Reference to Teaching and Learning in State Universities, Sri Lanka.

Abstract

Higher education has attracted greater attention on assuring and improving the quality of the institution and its study programmes. Generally, quality assurance desires compliance with prespecified policies and procedures in performing activities. Although universities employ a variety of computerized information systems they do not focus on the quality assurance process in the context. Therefore, most of the internal and external quality assurance activities are performed manually. An information system module can be proposed that facilitates the quality assurance process overcoming the existing drawbacks of the manual process. But the realization of respective quality assurance policies and procedures over the information system is a challenging task. The proposed information system provides an appropriate policy realization framework through three main sub-modules i.e., process monitoring and recording, quality assurance rules management and execution, and quality assurance performance evaluation. The study mainly focuses on policy realization of the quality assurance of the higher education teaching and learning process. Furthermore, three main aspects of ISO 9001:2000, monitor or measure the service, performance evaluation, and improvement action have been addressed by the proposed system. This conceptual design will be helpful for higher education policymakers and information system developers.