Ensuring Academic Quality and Skills Acquisition
The quality of teaching can only ever be as good as the education and professional development of the teaching staff.
A transparent strategy and structure for passing on and verifying learning objectives that is known to all who are engaged in teaching, an examination strategy that is adapted to specialised abilities and appropriate forms of examination and guidelines contribute as much to quality assurance as do practical testing tools which measure the success of these strategies and structures.
The clear focus of quality assurance for teaching, besides the purely specialised development of students and teaching staff, is to pass on and learn both specialised and social skills. Which skills are taught to students and subsequently examined on each degree programme are laid down in the respective degree programme’s module guide.
The acquisition of skills by junior academics is agreed in the relevant Human Ressources development strategy.
The faculties determine the abilities taught on each academic subject and the type of degree and this is confirmed in an accreditation process by external assessment.
The key competency training as described here augments the development of specialised skills with interdisciplinary personal development options for students and also offers freedom of choice, which is not the case in some of the specialised skills training.
Essential skills profiles for students and teaching staff mainly relate here to personal development and formation of talents and abilities.
The University of Göttingen is developing specific services for junior academics, in order to keep teaching and teaching skills up to date and put new developments in approaches to teaching into practice. Support services are constantly being developed to keep up with the process-based approach to quality development in teaching. The faculties and/or their Offices of the Deans of Studies control the use of results from evaluations and resultant potential teaching recommendations.
The University of Göttingen sets the following key areas in relation to quality development in teaching:
- A focus on research in teaching,
- Diversity and equal opportunities in all areas of teaching,
- Internationalisation of curricula,
- Interdisciplinary approach to the study programme,
- Digitisation of teaching and learning,
- Innovative forms of teaching and examination, and
- High quality advice and support for students.
A constant exchange between all those involved in teaching and those who undertake its administration and ongoing development is necessary to realise these key areas successfully. It helps to regularly review whether these key areas achieve a high quality as well as to assess and if necessary adjust the support services and measurement tools.
It is the same both for the faculties and for the support services from the administration.
The faculties support this process and target their focus towards teaching, they establish various incentives, such as giving an award for teaching or holding a day/or quality compasses on the theme of teaching, in order to highlight the significance of good teaching, show regard for it and make it visible.
Measurable parameters must be developed in order to review good teaching. This is where the course evaluation QM tool comes in, pointing the way for further development of the teaching skills of (trainee) teaching staff.