Unisa to review teaching quality management systems

Unisa recently officially launched the Council on Higher Education (CHE) Institutional Audit. The main objective of this event was to provide the necessary historical background, chronology and the university’s state of readiness for the institutional audit.

The CHE has given the university a formal agreement of its intention to conduct an institutional audit of its quality arrangements.  This request stems from an understanding that the university has a statutory responsibility, as a public provider of higher education in the country, to deliver quality services to its stakeholders. In South Africa, quality assurance is recognised as one of the steering mechanisms of higher education, working in tandem with planning and finance.

In her opening address, Professor Veronica McKay, the university’s Vice-Principal for Teaching, Learning, Community Engagement and Student Support, said that institutional audits have many purposes. She added: “And we often wonder are they fit for purpose? Their purposes are not only for accountability and improvement, but also to celebrate best practice.”

McKay further said, “I honestly believe that we have many elements of best practice at Unisa. We have been working on our quality management systems. I believe through this audit we will end with the CHE site visit in 2022. All of us within the university are currently involved in the process of the self-evaluation preparing for end of the year submissions.”

“We are quite involved, and we will review all our teaching and learning programmes. The process will provide an opportunity for us as a university and as the portfolio to reflect on and assess the effectiveness of our quality management systems and how we use these to improve and impact on our teaching for student success.”

Speaking on Advancing Quality Assurance as a Strategy to Leverage on Excellence in Unisa’s Academic Project, Principal and Vice-Chancellor (VC), Professor Puleng LenkaBula, highlighted the importance of the university’s introspection on the quality agenda and provision of quality imperatives, as guided by the Council on Higher Education institutional audit framework and higher education statutory regulatory framework. She said: “It is important for us as the university to ensure that the milestones in the provision of the academic project with emphasis on quality of our services is aligned to the African programme .”

“We are here today to launch the second circle of higher education institutional audit, and I would like to say that we will use this opportunity to learn from what we have been doing as the institution to offer that service which resonates with defining futures and using lessons learned to become a better institution. And that, colleagues, we start with all of us having given our honest self-reflection around what we do.”

Professor Thenjiwe Meyiwa, the Vice-Principal of Research, Postgraduate Studies, Innovation and Commercialisation, focused on the importance of audits to advance the research agenda within the university. Meyiwa said that ethics, quality and audits are a family. She emphasised that to achieve excellence, academics should be conscious, aware and alert to improve the academic project and research.

The event focused on processes and plans that will take place during this year’s and next year’s institutional audits.

*By Lesego Ravhudzulo, Journalist, Department of Institutional Advancement