Quality Assurance in an Academic Unit: A Case Study

Total quality management (TQM) is a philosophy that is now accepted worldwide in the business environment. However, in higher education, quality management is not widespread. Quality efforts are mainly limited to specific tasks, such as course development, curriculum design, laboratory certification, etc. The Division of Industrial Management at K. U. Leuven decided in 1990 to develop and implement a total quality approach in its organization. This process recently resulted in a total quality system based upon the implementation of a quality handbook. This paper describes this unique experience of TQM in an academic unit.     

The Introduction of Portfolios in Higher Education: a comparative study in the UK and the Netherlands

This article describes a comparative study of the introduction of student portfolios in two departments of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Nottingham Trent University in the UK. Portfolios are designed to facilitate effective management of lifelong learning, to provide a record of achievements and to encourage self-reflection by students.
The justifications for the portfolio initiative are different in the two countries. At the Vrije Universiteit, the initiative arose within the University but is being implemented by individual faculties. There is no standard model of implementation. At Nottingham Trent University, portfolios are being introduced as a response to a government directive, as part of a lifelong learning portfolio that each individual will carry forward into their working life. The University's response to this imperative is top-down and a University-wide model is being sought. The department model is one of several models that are being evaluated for this purpose.
This research project investigates whether these alternative starting points lead to differential responses from student users or not. Data are drawn from quantitative (questionnaires) and qualitative (interviews with managers, consultants and teachers) sources. Similarities and differences in students' responses to the portfolio exercise are identified and discussed in terms of factors such as the way the portfolios are introduced, the incentives offered to complete them, the role of the lecturer and peers in the monitoring of study progress, the quality of self-regulative skills, and students' learning expectations.     

Training for Technology Entrepreneurs

New technology-based business enterprises need qualified and highly motivated entrepreneurs with access to technical resources, facilities and expertise. This paper describes two training programmes for graduate technologists, which assist the transition from full-time education to successful entrepreneurial activity. The programmes are the European Technology Entrepreneurs Programme (ETEP) operating in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland, and Tijdelijke Onderemers Plaatsen (Temporal Entrepreneurial Placement, TOP) which operates in the Twente region of the Netherlands. Both programmes are sponsored by partnerships of universities and public authorities. The structures and features of ETEP and TOP, and the operating experiences since 1984, are described and discussed. It is concluded that technology entrepreneur development can be accelerated with the support of programmes such as ETEP and TOP. Arrangements for continued collaboration between the centres involved now includes participation in the EC SPRINT programme.     

PREDICTION OF GRADE POINT AVERAGES IN NURSING SCHOOLS USING SECOND-ORDER MULTIPLE REGRESSION MODELS

The present study was concerned with the prediction of first year grade point averages of associate degree nursing students. The primary objective of this investigation was to determine whether the inclusion of quadratic and/or interaction terms in a regression model would improve the prediction of student nurses' grade averages. The predictor battery included cognitive, biographical, and personality variables. Results indicated that interaction and quadratic terms improve both the predictability of grade point averages and the replicability of these predictions. The inclusion of higher order terms in prediction research is suggested as a means of improving predictive efficiency.     

Supervision of Counselors-in-Training Working With Clients With HIV

To assist counselors who are supervising students working with clients infected with HIV, this article uses Loganbill, Hardy, and Delworth's (1982) framework to highlight important issues that counselors-in-training are likely to face.     

Training of poor readers' phonological decoding skills: Evidence for syllable-bound processing

A flash card computer program designed to increase decoding speed in reading was evaluated with a sample of 55 eight- to twelve-year-old Dutch poor readers by using a pretest-training-posttest control group design. The reading level of the poor readers was comparable to the reading level of normal readers in grade two. After 8 weeks of practicing (twice a week) for 30 minutes per session, children in the training group showed substantial improvements in decoding speed not only on pseudowords directly practiced during the training, but also in untrained pseudowords and in existing words. The no-training control group did not improve in decoding speed from pre- to posttest. The results, furthermore, indicate that syllable-bound processes play a role in phonological decoding in Dutch, and that the flash card method used in this study stimulates poor readers to decode letter strings into syllabic units, which leads to an increase in decoding speed. The role of the syllable in phonological decoding and the potential of a specific flash card technique as a means to improve decoding skills of poor readers are discussed.     

Quality Assessment by Students: The Case of a Postgraduate Engineering Programme

In the framework of an ISO 9001 certification, a permanent evaluation system of an educational programme has been installed. All students evaluate very frequently the quality of courses and seminars. The evaluations are summarized and made public in such a way that they constitute a regular, quantitative teaching appraisal for every professor and teaching assistant. This system has some advantages, but also unexpected disadvantages: it engenders a lot of work; there are interpretation difficulties; it causes some uneasiness among staff members; and, most importantly, it reinforces the student's attitude of non-involvement.