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Academic Quality Assurance
As part of the strategic planning exercise (2012-2017), the Campus proposed to promote continuous curriculum renewal to ensure that the programmes are relevant to ‘develop the skill set necessary for success of graduates in the modern world, (The UWI Open Campus Operational Plan 2012-2017, p. 4). This was translated in the Campus’ need to ‘Develop and implement internal monitoring and curriculum review processes across all online, blended and face to face programmes.” (The UWI Open Campus Operational Plan 2012-2017, p. 4). With the support of the QAU, the Campus commenced its review and evaluation of online programmes in 2013 and to date, five (5) undergraduate and two (2) graduate programmes have been reviewed.
The QAU QA review process was customised to suit the unique nature of online programmes. This customisation included adapting the QA review system from 3 or 4 reviews per semester, as is applicable on the landed Campuses, to one (1) per academic year for online programmes. This was necessary as APAD is responsible for all online programmes offered by the Open Campus. Therefore, if the same system were used for the Open Campus that applies to the landed-campuses, APAD would have had to prepare between 6 and 8 SARs per academic year. This would be untenable, as APAD would be devoted to preparing multiple reports and would have no time to adequately address the recommendations resulting from the reviews.
For the reviews done, APAD developed 7 self-assessment reports (SAR) for the disciplines to be reviewed. The process required the input from the staff from all three departments of APAD, as well as input from students, graduates, employers and course facilitators. The extensive SAR process provides comprehensive information on several areas relating to the discipline and the processes and policies that guide the work of the APAD Departments. The information on the Site visit, team report and the follow-up process is discussed later in this chapter.
