Sultan Qaboos University

Collage of Education

Instructional & Learning Technology Department

Quality Assurance Course (TECH4211)

Quality Assurance Research Paper of

College of Commerce and Business Administration (CCBA) at Dhofar

University

Done by: Manar Al-Wahaibi (92604)

Maryam Al-Balushi (94899)

Wafa Al-Shueili (94090)

Submitted to: Dr. AbdoAlrahman Al-Haj

Overview

Quality assurance (2009) defined quality assurance as the systematic process aims to evaluate

educational programmes to ensure that acceptable standards of personnel, curriculum and

environment are being maintained.

According to Juran, Deming and Crosby philosophy in quality assurance, the institutions need to

make annual improvement plan, set a clear purposes of their services and products, train their

staff and remove the barriers in the institutions that prevent the improvement (Mishra, 2005). As

a result, the institution will be able to meet the national standards and improve their own

standards continuously.

In this paper we are going to conduct quality assurance plan for College of Commerce and

Business Administration (CCBA) at Dhofar University. This plan aims to evaluate three areas of

quality indicatorswhich are personnel, curriculum and environment in different aspects as we

mention in the action plan (Attached at the end of the paper). Observation and interview will be

used as the toolsfor assessing these areas one by one and thenproviding feedback after each steps

to ensure continuous improvement. One by one way of assessing was chosen because these areas

are connected and affect each other in sequence.

CCBA needs to adapt a quality assurance for its programs in order to be in the competitions with

other private institutions because of the increasing of the demand for this institution. However,

the parents and students are conscious of choosing the best one according to the ranking between

these institutions.

Personnel

Administrators, instructors and students are the essential and main part of education process

because of their significant roles that they play ineducation institution. These personnel in quality

assurance concern the qualification of administrators and instructors,instructors’ discipline and

students’ performance.Most of administrators and instructors have high qualification, they have

PH.D and Master degrees starting with Syed Ahsan Jamil Who is the dean of CCBA. They are

from different nationalities which enable them to share their experience, knowledge and teaching

methods which serve the improvement of educational process in the collage. Regarding to the

instructors’ discipline, they are available in the office hours to response to students’ problems

and questions. However, they don’t response to student’s email.Students’ performance is good in

general. Students are graduated with theoretical and practice knowledge including

communication and banking skills. They transfer what they learn in labour marketing easily.The

tool and method that used in this section is interview with college’s student through call and text

message. Also, we visit the CCBA website to collect data about the personal qualifications.

Curriculum

The curriculum of the collage should be high quality, modern and related to students’ needs

because it affects the overall quality of education and social satisfaction. CCBA has overall goal

which aims to provide high quality practical business education and produce life-long self-

learners committed to serve their society. It also has a set of objectivities which concentrate on

preparing students to have global economic knowledge and skills in their major, enabling

students to use the latest technologies that relate to their major in business and developing

communication skills and team work. The curriculums are chosen according to these objectives

and the new development in the social culture. Each curriculum has its own syllabus distributes

to the students at the begging of each semester. The syllabus contains specific cognitive and

psychomotor outcomes which are expected from the students at the end of the semester.

However, there are no attitude outcomes. In addition, the course syllabus contains course

timeline which will be followed through the semester.The objectives are stated correctly and

clearly following ABCD criteria. Lectures and field experience are the main teaching methods

that are used in this collage. In addition, the collage uses computer based instruction as a part of

some programs. It adapts project-based as assessment tool with others traditional forms of

assessment tools.The tool and method that used to conduct this portion of quality assurance plan

for CCBA is interview with college’s student through call and text message. Also, we visit the

CCBA website to evaluate the correctness and the relevance of the objectives.

Environment

The learning environment is central to quality education).t must be appropriate for all personnel

(students, teachers and administrators). The quality of the learning environment is determined by

the physical and culturalfactors (Education International, 2010). The institution should be aware

of providing the relevant infrastructure and resources that support educational process. Also, it

should provide suitable and required facilities for personnel. In this section we will assess the

environment in terms of tangibles of physical services, responsiveness of technicians and

communication between students and instructors.CCBA includes three departments which are

Department of Accounting & Finance, Department of Management & Marketing and

Department of Management of Information System. The physical services in the collage are

tangibles for students. There are computer labs and study rooms within the collage building that

specified for students only to work and study in their time. In addition, these labs include printers

for the students. The responsiveness of technicians is noticeable, they check the labs regularly

every week and they are willing to response to students’ problems. CCBA uses Moodle as

Learning Management System to deliver programs materials for their students. Also, it uses

Webmail for communication with the personnel. Students and instructors can access to the

Moodle and Webmail easily through university’s Wi-Fi. However instructors don’t response to

students’ mail immediately. The weakest point in this collage is the absent of collage library

which is specified in the collage majors.The tool and method that used to conduct this portion of

quality assurance plan for CCBA is interview with college’s student through call and text

message.

Conclusion

This plan covers three areasof quality assurance in education which are personnel, curriculum

and environment. This plan provides clear description of the aspects that evaluate quality

assurance dimensions in education. It based on website of the collage and interviews to collect

the data. We made interview with collage’s students because they are central of educational

process. So, they have enough experience about their collage. However, this tool was limited and

objective which affect our plan somehow negatively. Also, we didn’t have chance to visit the

collage and observe the process to judge the collage accurately. So, we recommend to develop

this plan by collecting data through visiting the collage for observation, interviewing with several

personnel and distributing questionnaire among personnel.

References

Dhofar University. ( 2013). College of Commerce andBusinessAdministration.

Retrieved May 3, 2015, fromhttp://www.du.edu.om/index.php?lang=en&name=College

of Commerce and Business Administration&itemid=29

Education International. (2010) .Creating Effective Teaching and Learning Environments: First

Results from TALIS.Brussels: OECD.Retrieved May 3, 2015,

fromwww.oecd.org/dataoecd/17/51/43023606.pdf

Mishra, S.(2005). Quality Assurance in Higher Education: An Introduction. India: NAAC.

Quality Assurance. (2009). Retrieved May 3, 2015,

fromhttp://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/higher-

education/quality-assurance/

Appendix

Interview Questions: Personnel

1. How you contact with your instructors?

2. Do your instructors give you feedback? When and how?

3. Are the instructors available during office hours?

4. What is the general level of the students' performance in the collage?

Interview Questions: Curriculum

1. Do you have a syllabus for your course? Describe it for me.

2. What are the types of objectives in your syllabus? Give me example of your objectives.

3. Does the content of your curriculum meet the objectives that provided in the syllabus?

4. Do the theoretical and practical parts are connected to each other's in you curriculums?

5. How you applied what you learn?

6. What teaching methods and technology are used in your lectures?

Interview Questions: Environment

1. Do you have a computers labs in your collage which are available for you?

2. Are the technicians responsive to provide the help?

3. Do you have a library in your collage?

4. What are facilitates available in your collage?

5. What are the weakness of your collage infrastructure?

Process Diagram

Personnel

Qualification

Dicipline

Students' Performance

Curriculum

Efficiency

Reliability

Correctness

Environment

Tangibles of Phisycal Services

Responsiveness of Stuff

Communication

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