Evidence Collection for Quality Assurance (ECQA)
Overview
Operated by CHTL, the ECQA aims to assist the University in ascertaining how well students have achieved its Seven Graduate Attributes (GAs) through collection of direct and indirect evidence. Figure 1 and Figure 2 illustrate its components and operation respectively.
The aforesaid two types of evidence are triangulated to ascertain student achievement of GAs under the University’s learning environment of offering Best Student Experience (BSE), this in turn, can help inform the University of quality assurance and enhancement in learning and teaching.
/ecqa.png "Evidence Collection for Quality Assurance")
/ecqa-timeline-scaled.jpg "Evidence Collection for Quality Assurance")
Benefits of ECQA
- Identify strengths and weaknesses in learning and teaching
- Provide recommendations to quality assurance and quality enhancement of learning and teaching
- Identify and disseminate good practices
- Constitute credible evidence about the values of HKBU’s education
Introduction
The UAP collects direct evidence in Reading, Writing, Critical Thinking, and Quantitative Reasoning covering the GAs of Communication, Creativity and Skills. Two instruments are adopted – Educational Testing Service (ETS) Proficiency Profile (ETS Proficiency Profile) and Academic Proficiency Profile (APP).
As long as it has further developed over the one decade since AY2012/13, the UAP has gained more recognition from our faculty and staff members. Its role in monitoring student achievement in relevant GAs of Whole Person Education was also recognised by the UGC Quality Assurance Council (UGC-QAC) Audit Panel in its Report of the Second Audit Cycle on HKBU (https://www.ugc.edu.hk/doc/eng/qac/report/hkbu201602e.pdf).
Purpose
The UAP is conducted as an assessment instrument outside the curriculum for the first, second and final year students of each cohort to enable longitudinal tracking of their performance in the aforesaid GAs. By completing the UAP in each phase, students can track their progress and make use of the results to improve their learning and prepare for their careers.
Three Phases
- The Phase One is undertaken before students’ commencement of their studies at HKBU (i.e., Yr0) for students from both First-Year First-Degree (FYFD) and Senior Year Admission (SYA) to gauge their baseline academic level.
- The Phase Two is conducted in the second year to measure students’ learning progress at the mid-point of their undergraduate studies. However, this is not applicable to SYA students whose studies only last two years.
- The Phase Three is implemented at the end of students’ final year studies and covers both FYFD and SYA students.
Two Instruments
As mentioned above, there are two instruments adopted for the UAP – (1) ETS Proficiency Profile and (2) Academic Proficiency Profile (APP).
Developed in the US and widely adopted by institutions in North America, adoption of ETS Proficiency Profile facilitates the University to benchmark with institutions from the US and other parts of the world. The APP is an in-house assessment instrument developed by HKBU based on the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government’s Common Recruitment Examination (HKSAR CRE) to cater for local context in teaching and learning.
Adoption of these two instruments demonstrates HKBU’s determination in attempting to ensure the comparability of its education provisions with those inside Hong Kong and across the globe.
Why does UAP matter to students?
- Individual score reports are provided to each participating student, and facilitate their evaluation of own performance related to their peers.
- The results are useful for students to plan and develop their academic specialties and generic skills.
- The results also allow students to track their own learning as they progress in their studies.
Why does UAP matter to University?
- Student participation will provide indispensable data for the University to continuously improve its learning and teaching and other related support for students.
- The data analytics generated could furnish the University with credible evidence to assist in ascertaining the values of HKBU’s education.
Introduction
OA is a systematic method to ascertain how well the programme intended learning outcomes and GAs have been achieved by students inside the curriculum.
A new approach to OA has been implemented in AY2020/21 based on the Outcome-Based Teaching and Learning (OBTL) concept of constructive alignment (Figure 3 and 4), where student achievement in GAs is gathered from their performance in all major compulsory and elective courses (Figure 5). This ongoing exercise assists in identifying and addressing key learning and teaching issues in programmes, and enhancing their overall quality to benefit student learning.
/obtl.png "OBTL, Constructive Alignment & QA Mechanism")
/curriculum-maps.png "Curriculum Maps for PILO-Course and GA-PILO")
/ecqa-three-oa-steps.png "The Three OA steps")
Introduction
SLEQ has been put in place at HKBU since AY2017/18 to solicit views and comments from students on their expectations towards and actual experiences from their studies at our University.
Purpose
Similar to the operation of UAP, the SLEQ aims to monitor student learning experiences and self-report achievement of GAs, so as to facilitate provision of timely intervention and assistance for quality assurance and enhancement to student learning and their university lives.
Why does SLEQ matter to students?
After completing each SLEQ, students will receive their own individual reports on their learning progress in comparison to their previous one(s) and their peers.
Why does SLEQ matter to University?
Students’ feedback to SLEQ can provide important data for students themselves and the University to understand their learning experiences, university lives and how good they are with regard to the GAs. Based on the data, the University can continuously improve and develop learning and teaching initiatives, and render effective support.