Asst. Prof. Mari Anjeli Lubrica-Crisanto, UPOU faculty member and Assistant to the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (A2VCAA) for Quality Assurance (QA) was invited by the European Union Support to Higher Education in the ASEAN Region (SHARE) to impart her experiences related to internal quality assurance.
SHARE held its Community of Practice Online Seminar on 29 September 2022 with the topic “Internal Quality Assurance: Views and insights from the region.” The activity aimed to provide the audience with the opportunity to understand the current challenges and opportunities in the QA system in participating countries.
Asst. Prof. Lubrica-Crisanto shared titled “What does Quality Assurance do? How to engage and inform internally?” In her presentation during the breakout session, she shared the context of UPOU as part of the UP system (an open university situated on a residential campus) which has recently gone full force to enhance its academic and non-academic services. She also elaborated on selected QA practices of UPOU in terms of program development, course materials development, course delivery, and learner support system. Asst. Prof. Crisanto also presented the QA System model, drafted by Dr. Primo Garcia, UPOU Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. The QA System model is a visual presentation of all resources coming in together for QA internal and external assessments that translates to accountability, public trust, and institutional confidence. She covered the comparison of the internal and external assessment process and activities and presented the various QA initiatives of UPOU. She also mentioned that the next steps on QA will include administrative support for assessments, various research activities, roundtable discussions, review of QA in ODeL frameworks, adoption of learning analytics, the institutionalization of a QA unit, and the development QA framework that will cater to the pedagogies that are unique to UPOU. Asst. Prof. Crisanto also detailed how engagements happen internally through training programs, conferences, webinars, roundtable discussions, and informal discussions. With this, she ended her talk with a call that “Engaging people in QA is a challenge worth taking!”
SHARE is an EU Grant-funded project with an overarching objective to strengthen regional cooperation, enhance the quality, competitiveness, and internationalization of ASEAN higher education institutions and students, and contribute to an ASEAN Community. It conducts various activities in the area of Internal Quality Assurance as part of the ASEAN Higher Education Harmonisation Community of Practice (CoP). Its kick-off meeting was conducted in December 2021, followed by a needs assessment among QA personnel from universities across ASEAN which led to a six-day virtual training course on Internal Quality Assurance for IQA personnel of the SHARE universities in July 2022.
Written by Ammanessi Joy Lapitan and Anna Cañas-Llamas
Edited by Myra C. Almodiel and Yaselle Irene Angela M. Yambao
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