Managing the quality of teaching in higher education institutions in the 21st century.

The management of quality in Australian higher education has had one eye on the quality agenda associated with accountability and the other eye on the major transformations affecting teaching and learning. This paper examines some of the ways in which these two trajectories are intersecting and forecasts how quality will be managed in the 21st century. The paper recognises trends towards diversity among institutions in the sector and the need to tailor quality approaches for particular market niches. The impact of communication and information technologies and the rise of collaborative teaching and social learning on the nature and quality of university teaching are discussed. A reduction in mistrust of the quality agenda is forecast as data and methods improve and academics regain a sense of control over formative uses of quality activities.

Introduction

The 21st century is very near and very far. Concepts of `quality' and `teaching' will continue to carry the meanings they have today but they will also be transformed in the next hundred years in ways that we can as yet not envisage. Quality management will continue to reflect roots in terms such as `assuring processes' and `fitness of purpose' through self-evaluation, assessment of outcomes for generic and specific skills, graduate employability, indicators of efficiency and effectiveness and actions to enhance and improve quality. Processes for national and international certification of quality standards will continue as a means of re-assuring governments and other key stakeholders that the move towards universality in higher education will not occur to the detriment of quality.

In Australia, the major shifts in quality assurance will result from an increasing pressure for `diversity' where this is a euphemism for product and service differentiation on the one hand, and for status differentiation or stratification on the other. Some institutions will succeed in defining particular market segments as their niches and will offer courses, research focuses and services customised to these markets and not to others. Their brand names will be associated with these niches and will signify the distinctiveness of the university. Institutions that are rated, in public perceptions, more highly in terms of status will attract the most able students and excellent staff and have higher quality learning environments (e.g. state of the art libraries, laboratories and IT systems). They will strive to have their names recognised as a high quality brand, (although status may not always equate with objective measures of quality). All universities will seek strategic alliances with other national and international providers, will work collaboratively with major corporations on packaged curriculum products and/or R & D products and will use a variety of media to deliver teaching and learning in a manner appropriate to the needs of their students. The university as an ideal type, that always offers philosophy and physics as the foundation to a comprehensive range of courses, will be replaced by many types of universities, some of which are accorded higher status in the mind of the public. The current trend to classify universities is symptomatic of this trend.

The move towards greater diversity is one response to changes in both the supply and demand side of education markets. Deregulation has introduced new providers and increased competition. The student market is fragmenting into identifiable segments (Cunningham et al., 1997). The business of universities used to be to offer on campus classes for school leavers. Learning is now becoming a frequently repeated experience for most adults, in which teaching may occur at a distance mediated by a range of communication media. A growing percentage of students will be `non-traditional' learners. They will have a wide range of educational vendor choices; not only private universities, but also not-for-profit organisations and companies for whom education is a sideline or a way to sell more software. Often, too, it will be the employer, rather than the prospective student, who chooses the vendor university. Quality teaching and learning for school leavers may not be the same as for other students. Some undergraduates do not always react well to computer-mediated learning (Alexander & McKenzie, 1998). Their reactions differ from those attracted to some of the new breed of university providers (e.g. Phoenix) that are capitalising on intensive face-to-face and web-based courses for professionals who are upgrading their qualifications by postgraduate coursework. Customer focus and service orientation for a chosen segment of the market will be given more attention within an increasingly user-pays environment.

New information technologies will further differentiate the higher education system. The International Association of University Presidents (1997) is not alone in its view that information technology is having a revolutionary effect on teaching and learning, research and the administrative management of universities. One of the major quality drivers associated with technology will be cost, with some universities unable to invest and others making the wrong choices. Simson (1998) highlights the huge gap between the `informatics rich' and the `informatics poor'. This will be true of the differences between universities in the developed and the developing world, and will underscore the diversity of institutions within countries.

As the higher education system becomes more complex and textured, quality management will need to follow suit with contextualised approaches. Each university will develop quality practices that are informed by its own mission and profile (or product) mix. Each will make strategic choices about how to invest so as to enhance teaching and learning to suit the needs of its own client group and the constraints of financial and other circumstances. More generic approaches based on the use of homogenous indicators are likely to persist in the activities of national and international external accountability agencies. The influence of governments will be moderated where universities are able to use mission-specific data in a more sophisticated and effective manner in the market place to claim distinctiveness. Achieving this shift will require the Australian public to become more adept at discerning meaningful differences between universities than it has been accustomed to do in the past.

The pathway to this future for the quality agenda cannot be forecast with any precision. Reid (1996) opens Higher education or education for hire with the words. `The academic world is not what it used to be' (p. 1). He captures both the breadth of the changes in higher education and the rueful response of many academics to change. He goes on to describe a higher education environment characterised by public scrutiny, a diverse student body, budget cuts and the threat of forced retrenchments. The evolution of a quality system capable of handling this new environment is still in its infancy. Universities have considered, but generally not embraced, the apparatus of continuous quality improvement (Deming, 1986) for teaching, although there has been some take up for administration and in the vocational education and training (VET) sector. Higher education is still grappling with the magnitude of the transformations that are affecting teaching itself. It is another big step to adopt and adapt quality processes to do justice to both innovation and the elements of good scholarship that will remain constant in this milieu. There has been some comment on the perceived threat to quality from real falls in funding and rising staff-student ratios. Quality debates have yet, however, to come to grips in a sophisticated way with some of the more fundamental shifts. Two trends that are taken up in later sections of this paper are the impact of technology and multimedia on teaching and the growing interest in group-based teaching and group-based learning, and the issues that these raise for quality management.

The question of who manages the quality agenda in teaching and learning and for what purpose has become politically charged in recent years as national governments in OECD countries have become aggressively interventionist in this arena. Historically, the teacher-scholar had personal responsibility for giving students a quality learning experience. This is a tradition epitomised by the Oxbridge one-on-one tutor-student relationship. In much of the western world, academics have lost a substantial measure of their personalised control over the formative aspects of the quality process. They are answerable to others both inside and outside the university in the name of accountability. This has created some fear and resentment.

Summative uses of quality mechanisms are now more prevalent at all levels (institution, department and individual). Close interest is being paid to the quality of universities by the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs (DETYA) and by some state auditors general. Accreditation bodies are a part of the regional scenery in the United States higher education sector and might be expected to operate also in Australia for universities in parallel with the systems that apply for accreditation of the VET sector. Accreditation systems are also being developed to assure the quality of courses offered in international markets (see, for example, proposals from the Global Alliance for Transnational Education and the OECD). During the first quarter of the 21st century, some measure of control over improvements in the quality of teaching may be returned to individual academics. However, this will occur in parallel with the continued growth and sophistication of internal and external accountability agencies.

Mistrust of the quality agenda

In simple terms, quality is about excellence in teaching and learning, although this can be at the level of the system, institution, course or a particular class. Bloom's (1987) lament of the impoverishment of the student mind is one of the more far-reaching and timeless critiques of scholarship. More direct and contemporary concerns include American concerns about `troubling issues of quality' in higher education that date from the mid-1980s (Edgerton, 1997, p. 13). Many Australian observers are deeply disturbed by the potential for the national system in this country to lose whole disciplines as a result of `vertical cuts' to the academic profiles of individual universities. Surveys of student satisfaction are generally at the level of the course or class. At all levels, quality is often a judgement made by someone on the basis of personal values and available information.

Quality is about customer satisfaction or `the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs' (International Standards Organization 1986 definition). Accountability is not the same thing as quality and is as much about power and control, as it is about performance. Accountability was being labelled as a `dominant feature of tertiary education' almost two decades ago (Sheldrake & Linke, 1979, Foreword). Accountability is the process of reporting to persons who have a responsibility for providing something, but who have passed this role to others to undertake on their behalf. For example, governments and parents who fund education delegate the responsibility for teaching students to universities, who in turn delegate this activity to the individual teachers in their employ. An accountability repot gives an account of what the teacher or university has produced and may lead to a reward or sanction, depending on the assessment of performance. There is an obvious problem if the various parties engaged in these transactions do not have the same view about the nature of excellence, how it is being measured or assessed and how it is best achieved.

The present levels of resentment in the Australian sector are being fed from a number of sources:

* fear of a loss of institutional and personal autonomy to teach curricula and promote scholarship as the free pursuit of knowledge, without the threat of corruption or capture by corporate or government agendas

* recognition that many performance measures are imperfect indicators of teaching excellence (hence the level of concern in Australia about the government's use of the Course Experience Questionnaire data)

* concern that the measures are affected by contextual variables outside the control of the teacher and institution

* fear that the data will be used punitively to damage an institution in the market or to re-allocate funds via performance-based funding.

Similar fears help to explain the resistance of staff unions in Australia to the public use of student survey data about the quality of units, although this is commonplace in the United States (e.g. at Harvard). It is reflected also in the resistance of institutions and faculties to a greater use of performance-based incentives (e.g. research and teaching quanta).

Without good information, academics, like most people, are capable of self-deception. Hierarchical structures allow managers to blame subordinates for performance failures, and vice versa, just as universities and governments blame each other. A substantial investment is now being made by a wide range of bodies in management information generally and performance indicators more specifically. Action is being taken by DETYA, universities on their own and in consortia such as Union, the organisations generating student course satisfaction (CEQ) and graduate employment (GDS) data and the Good universities guide. Internal university data systems are also being overhauled and put to use for planning and performance assessment at all levels. Increasingly, in future, internal data will be coupled with better external environmental scanning and market research. Confidence in the quality process should improve as management information systems improve and institutions and individual teachers regain a measure of control over their own quality processes. A data-driven approach can drive out fear by displacing subjective judgements with analysis. Quality becomes more closely linked to data and less to self-assertions of quality and greatness.

Differentiation and stratification

Differentiation and stratification will be central to quality benchmarking in the 21st century as institutions (or particular courses they offer) acquire `markers' of difference, quality and prestige. A university may target a distinctive niche by focusing on a selected set of attributes. It may offer, for example, some disciplines to the exclusion of others; develop a profile related to part of the economy (e.g. mining or services); target particular types of students (e.g. mature-age, working professionals); limit its services to some geographical markets; or develop expertise in one major type of scholarship (e.g. undergraduate teaching or research).

Australian universities have, with some recent exceptions, been unwilling or unable to make the necessary choices to become distinctive in this way. There are serious impediments slowing the rate of change:

* a lack of will and change management skills within university management

* insufficient information about markets and demand trends in the short or longer term

* union and staff resistance to loss of jobs and changes in employment

* insufficient discretionary funds to invest in the costs of transition (`patched' with some recent government rationalisation funds)

* views about the course mix that is perceived to be necessary for a `real' or `high quality' university

* profound concerns that commodification will lead to the national demise of courses with weak demand that have intrinsic economic and cultural value (e.g. physics, philosophy, languages and some arts subjects).

Universities have tended to try to straddle as many different quality attributes as possible and the result for many is a lack of a unified vision, a proliferation of programs and a dissipation of resources. Many mission statements share a commitment to excellence and an international reputation, leading Coaldrake and Stedman (1998) to comment:

   The strategic plans of most Australian universities look remarkably
   similar, when in fact there is no single garden variety of university, and
   when there are strong demands for differentiation and diversity across
   higher education institutions. (p. 153)

One manifestation of this lack of focus is in the proliferation of undergraduate academic programs where these are driven more by teacher preferences (the supply side) than by an astute reading of demand. Differentiation is also apparent in postgraduate teaching:

   However deliberately a central policy relating to postgraduate education
   may be designed to cover the spectrum of disciplines, it is unusual for it
   to apply equally effectively to all knowledge areas. (Becher, Henkel, &
   Kogan, 1994, p. 9)

Many Australian universities are committed to postgraduate teaching. Various leading universities have set targets for postgraduate enrolment (University of Queensland: 20%, University of Melbourne: 30%). The realisation of such targets will have quality consequences for both undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Scholarships are being offered nationally to attract the nation's best graduates (Melbourne, Tasmania, and Adelaide). Postgraduate support and facilities (laboratory office space, libraries, IT, equipment, materials and access to the `mega-sites' of corporate partners) will continue to vary widely among different universities. Some new, large universities such as RMIT University have aspirations to play a major role in postgraduate education. They may focus on coursework rather than research awards, signaling the manner in which life-long learning and market segmentation are adding a new dynamic to the differentiation of postgraduate education and, therefore, to the management of quality for postgraduates.

A strong focus on a distinctive mission at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, that is well grounded in reliable market research, should bring significant benefits to an institution. A decision to focus must be accompanied by a rigorous look at the institution's strengths and weaknesses, an assessment of how able it is to meet the expectations of the niche(s) it is targeting and the planning mechanisms needed to add or phase out courses and services, as needed. Such decisions will have a foundation in a shared vision and articulated goals and thus be more transparent and less subject to internal competition and conflict. The major challenge for management is to `create constancy of purpose' and infuse it throughout the organisation (Deming, 1986, p. 23). Leaders do not produce the `vision' of a university as an `outgrowth of their own personal agendas' (Birnbaum, 1992, p. 25). Rather `goals are already within the institution, waiting to be both discovered and renewed through interpretation' (p. 28). Building quality through the execution of a distinctive vision requires a strong effort to communicate and to build consensus.

Becher et al. (1994) distinguish differentiation from status ranking (stratification). Differentiation allows for institutions to be different, but equal. Stratification suggests a rank order related to quality. Universities with sufficient prestige are able to define their target market in terms of status rather than discipline or other product difference. Oxford, Cambridge and the United States `Research 1 universities' are in this category. The Research 1 universities are identified in a widely accepted benchmarking system provided by US News and World Report using indicators of research inputs and outputs. Not all stratification systems have this degree of objectivity. Notwithstanding this, a prestigious brand name permits the perception of quality to be used as a marketing approach to recruit high quality staff and students, and hence may be self-fulfilling. High status universities are better able to resist external systems of accountability:

   Policies designed for universal application may in actuality be moderated
   by questions of prestige. Institutions of high standing may be able to
   resist what they perceive to be unacceptable demands to an extent that the
   more politically and financially vulnerable institutions cannot. (Becher et
   al., 1994, p. 8)

Quality as outcomes for the learner and as customer service

One of the more ironic shifts that may occur in the 21st century will be the way in which the traditional academic comes to terms with the rhetoric of `customer service'. In recent years, experts in pedagogy have focused their attention on student-centred learning and learning outcomes. This strikes a sympathetic chord with many dedicated teaching staff who are genuinely interested in their students. Although the genesis is quite different, this is consistent with a customer focus. As students pay a greater share of the costs of their education, they will expect universities to provide the services they demand in the market at large; that is better service, lower prices, higher quality and a mix of products that satisfy their own sense of a good education (Zemsky, Massy, & Oedel, 1993, p. 56). In short, they will expect to exercise their rights as consumers. Where universities fail to meet student expectations, they risk litigation under state and federal consumer protection and trade practices law.

Universities will need to strike a new balance between teaching, research, learning and service. Many academics reject the notion of students as customers. The 1992 Australian report, Higher education: Achieving quality, eschewed the term, in favour of `stakeholder' (Higher Education Council, 1992, p. 9). There is a strong professional mistrust in treating the student on the basis that `the customer is always right'. It is thought that educators must be open to do something that the recipient does not currently like if the long-term aims of education are to have any effect (Winch, 1996, p. 17). However, as the realities of lifelong learning take hold, universities, like other companies selling products in the open market, will also be seeking to attract return business, rather than rely only on the new customer (e.g. the school leaver). This would seem to be an irresistible pressure for the sector to find some new way of accommodating market and academic traditions.

Consumer sovereignty is most effective where the market has good information. As the 1900s draw to a close, the Australian Government is attempting to force the pace of change in higher education by publication of indicators, purported to reflect quality differences. Government data are expected to supplement the information available from university marketing materials and private publications such as the Good universities guide. In a similar way, pressure from the Ontario auditor general in 1994 led universities in that province to undertake an elaborate study of indicators. That exercise appeared to founder on the notion of finding an effective means to measure `value added'. At the same time, the data on Canadian universities provided by McLeans magazine have grown in credibility.

The expectation is that governments will intervene less as better information about university differences is made available and market forces become more potent in both domestic and international markets. `If universities do not adopt better practices, then that is their business and they will suffer the market consequences' (Coaldrake & Stedman, 1998, p. 53). The current push for education to be developed as an export commodity will require the quality of `the product' to match its price and be appropriate for overseas students (Clanchy & Ballard, 1992). By the 21st century, universities will recognise and value the fact that they are service industries. Although students may still not be described as `customers', the use of tools such as a student services charter will be more commonplace.

Quality and the impact of communication and information technologies

No consensus has emerged on the overall impact of information technology on the long-term nature and quality of university teaching. At one extreme, Noam (1995) foresees the complete demise of the university as a teaching institution. He traces the rise and projected fall of universities in terms of the monopoly they have had, and have now lost, over access to scarce information resources. He sees textbook publishers becoming the new purveyors of curricula. Massy and Zemsky, two United States economists studying higher education, also predict that adding `high tech' to the existing infrastructure of universities could threaten the viability and affordability of the higher education system (Massy & Zemsky, 1995). The cost of technology is the first major driver of differences in infrastructure and hence in associated quality outcomes. Massy and Zemsky see parallels with the increasing use of high technology in medicine. They insist that `intelligent substitution' should be followed if universities are to survive.

More optimistic views have faith that the university will persist as an institution, but will be radically changed by technology, both in the classroom and in the organisation and practice of backroom administration (Global Alliance, 1998). A failure to transform teaching and learning and to rise to the challenge of what Simson (1998) calls the inevitability of the digital economy would be as short-sighted as if universities had failed to use books after the Gutenburg revolution.

   We are entering a phase of human history in which the only intractable form
   of poverty will be ignorance, and in which the primary competitive
   advantage between enterprises and societies will be access to knowledge and
   the value invested in knowledge workers [which leads to a conclusion that
   the] information super-highway will have to run through the teaching and
   learning heart of every great campus, and the students will have to be as
   much at home in cyberspace as their counterparts in the `virtual
   university'. (A.D. Gilbert, 1997, p. 6)

A second major driver of quality will be the use to which technology is put for teaching and learning. S.W. Gilbert (1996a, 1996b) offers two visions. Vision I emphasises the use of a distance education paradigm, for delivery of higher education to students. This offers possibilities for increasing staff-student ratios and reducing the investment in bricks and mortar. In this model, technology is applied primarily as a mass distribution medium. The Open University in the United Kingdom, now one of ten higher education institutions worldwide with more than 200 000 students, uses technology for access and participation by large numbers, many of whom may be remote from the geographic base of the university. Vision II for Gilbert aims to use technology as a tool for improved pedagogy, whether it is delivered on site or at a distance. It focuses on increasing the responsiveness of teachers and other resources to the needs of students and strengthening collaboration among a community of scholars from undergraduates through to seasoned researchers. The first vision sees education as knowledge delivery and access to credentials. The second is more about knowledge construction. Each vision reflects different concerns and purposes, and the way forward for most universities and for the system as a whole is likely to involve a mix of both. A key challenge will be devising new forms of quality measurement for each vision; that is, for knowledge delivery and for construction.

At this stage, fewer than one third of courses using new media in Australian universities appear to improve student learning compared with the more conventional face-to-face experience (Alexander & McKenzie, 1998). Impediments are thought to be insufficient training and preparation for both staff and students in teaching and learning in these media. More positive results are reported by Deden (1998) for the Commonwealth colleges of Pennsylvania State University, where there has been close attention to supporting staff via a staged introduction to technology. Deden's approach has quite deliberately coupled the use of technology with a requirement that staff employ techniques to encourage collaborative learning. This promotes interaction between staff and students and between students within the group even when using technology (Deden, 1998; Deden & Carter, 1996). Laurillard (1993) describes the value of interaction in the promotion of effective learning and describes the process as `conversation', while Ramsden (1992) uses the term `dialogue'.

Interactive teaching via electronic media also contains the seeds of a valuable promise to academics in their concerns about the way in which the quality agenda has evolved. Technology can facilitate immediate detection and feedback about problems in teaching and learning at the front line where students are most immediately affected. For example, the use of a `bug button' in Web-based courses allows students to give staff instant feedback on problems of both a technical and a pedagogical nature. Technology also provides a means for staff to track the learning process over students as they progress through an exercise or instructional material and to take remedial action where necessary. This will help teachers to `listen' in more profound ways to their students and thereby change their understanding of good teaching as envisaged by Ramsden (1992).

Quality and the rise of collaborative teaching and social learning

Another element in the landscape of change is group teaching. This is attracting new attention, although it is not a new idea (e.g. see Jaques, 1992). The image of the outstanding teacher has traditionally been of an outstanding person who combines knowledge and scholarship with the vocation and skill to inspire. The one-on-one relationship between teacher and student remains the ideal in many universities. The traditions of the academy systematically select staff who prefer an individualistic work style. This is reinforced by an environment in which the traditional view is that the classroom and what goes on there are the private precinct of the instructor in charge. Student assessment and staff promotion and tenure policies reward the individual and encourage competition with peers, all of which adds to and encourages the isolation of an individual from peers.

Collaborative teaching and social learning are assuming new significance as financial constraints push up class sizes, leading some staff to substitute more in-class group work (syndication) in place of tutorials. The application of technology has encouraged the redesign of curricula, materials and delivery, where the range of expertise and need to achieve economies call for a team approach. Group work is being encouraged by some pedagogical theory and by research that shows positive learning outcomes are associated with social learning (Ratcliff, 1995). This is reinforced by the calls by employers and echoed by government for more team-based generic skills (e.g. Kemp, 1998). Work-based learning in its various forms (e.g. placements, practicums, co-operative learning) offers opportunities for group learning in an industry context. The trend to group interaction is not confined to undergraduate teaching. Many universities have moved away from the single-supervisor model to the panel of supervisors/advisers that may include international researchers or members of corporate R&D labs as co-supervisors. Collaborative learning is being integrated in the United States with a move to having undergraduates involved in team-based research work.

Faculty members and students both need to be taught how to work collaboratively. This does not come naturally. Deden (1998) describes the problems that can arise when an institution encourages active, collaborative learning but does not consider the concomitant academic staff development needs. Promotion and reward skills will need to reflect this too. Students also need new skills. These include not only the technical know-how to access Web-based resources and communicate electronically. At a more fundamental level, they need to learn how to learn, to be aware of learning styles and how to make best use of group dynamics. Deden reports that the latter is being described as `interactive competence'. One private provider, recognising a market opportunity, has acquired copyright protection for `Student-Centered Discussion'.(1) This approach assures that students rapidly develop the ability to interact critically and actively with study materials (written texts, diagrams, videos, formulas, etc.). They come to discussion sessions ready to ask questions and to offer insights in a responsible, scholarly fashion as the group works together. The method teaches people how to ensure a positive, productive group process. Students develop a meta-cognitive approach for looking at how they learn and how they interact with others that can transfer readily to new situations.

Co-operative learning and collaborative project work can be provided for distance students. Internet-based conferencing software is now being used for both synchronous chats and asynchronous discussion, shared development of reports and presentations, and for peer review and feedback.

The changes required for collaborative teaching and social learning are not embraced easily by many academics, or by all universities and quality accrediting agencies. Academics continue to be offered incentives as individual teachers (such as the Australian Government's teaching excellence awards). Not all staff are willing to find workable solutions for the problems posed in the assessment of group work by students, although well-tried methods are available from pioneering colleges like Kings and Alverno in the United States. The physical structure of lecture theatres discourages in-class group work, and more suitable spaces are still rare. Stanford has one of the exceptions -- an experimental flexible classroom intended to support a wider range of teaching methods including small group work that is equipped with portable computers, wireless networking capabilities, a single fixed computer display station and moveable furniture. Conventional quality measures are not yet well equipped to handle group-based teaching or learning, or are too generalised to be very useful (an example is the item on generic skills, in the Australian Course Experience Questionnaire).

A major challenge for managers as we approach the new millennium is to make a much greater and more effective commitment to the development of staff skills and to knowledge about the changes in the theory and practice of teaching and learning. This is fundamental to assuring quality. There is a growing view in both the United Kingdom and Australia that training in tertiary teaching should be mandatory for academics. Experience to date suggests, however, that we are not yet confident that we can design and deliver professional training that will do justice to our aspirations. The Australian Government is funding experiments via the CAUT/CUTSD schemes, in teaching, learning and staff development. Projects generally have limited system-wide utility. Dissemination and training tend to rely on the small unit or centre of professional experts who work hard to achieve a measure of acceptance of their services and knowledge, by the majority of mainstream academics. In the United States, a major investment is being made in researching the nature of learning (e.g. at Harvard, Michigan, Stanford and Pennsylvania). This may help to remedy the criticism that a good deal of instructional design practice is not well grounded, but `has evolved as a kind of procedural and media-production craft' (Hannafin, 1997, p. 3).

Conclusions

The managers of universities in the 21st century will understand how quality in teaching and learning can best be managed for their own institution. The best universities will invest heavily in staff who, like their students, will be lifelong learners. Staff will be rewarded not only for enhancing their discipline knowledge, but also for their skills in the teaching profession as it evolves. Universities will ensure that their students are well prepared for learning in different styles and in the use of communications media that best fit their circumstances. This will be part of the customisation of university products.

Like the content and delivery of courses, quality management at the level of the institution will be contextualised for a chosen market niche. The university will, however, be able to respond to any generic indicators or processes favoured by national and international accreditation bodies, or to assessments published by private organisations. Innovation in teaching will continue, as traditional scholarship comes to terms with market forces and a more grounded understanding of the learning process. New quality technologies will need to be developed to handle the complexities that accompany collaborative teaching and learning and the mix of delivery options available to each teacher and each learner.

The scepticism and fear now felt by some universities and academics will be lessened. There will undoubtedly still be occasions in which damage is done as a result of the misuse of data but, overall, confidence should grow as management information systems improve. Individual academics will regain a sense of more control over the quality process as it affects them directly. The new technologies that enhance the interaction (`conversations' or `dialogues') between teachers and learners will also provide new and more immediate ways for teachers to get reliable feedback from students about the quality of teaching, instructional materials and progress with learning. This will allow teaching staff to improve their practice and to achieve better results. The constants of genuine scholarship and academia as a learning community will again return to the foreground of university life and reaffirm the joys of good teaching and learning that are so fundamental to delivering quality.

Keywords

diversity (institutional)
educational assessment
educational quality
quality assurance
resistance to change
university teaching

Note

(1) For information on teaching Interactive Competence through Student-Centered Discussion, see: http://www.kiski.net/~dwight/scd/

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Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of the paper were written with the assistance of Professor Anthony Watson and Associate Professor Robyn Quin.

Professor Millicent Poole is Vice-Chancellor, Professor Elizabeth Harman is Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and Professor Ann Deden is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Teaching, Learning and Technology), Edith Cowan University, Pearson Street, Churchlands, Western Australia 6018.