The quality assurance system aims to ensure that the University continues to deliver high-quality programmes and courses, maintains and enhances the quality of teaching and learning. The combination of internal and external review is essential to the quality cycle of planning, implementing, monitoring, evaluating and refining, which contributes to the continual improvement of current practices.
The supreme academic body of the University is the Senate, where all academic policies and regulations have to be discussed and approved. Senate approval is also needed for new programmes and their revalidations, as well as new courses and their subsequent presentations. The Senate deals with its business through a system of committees. For the purpose of quality assurance, it relies on the committees/groups to conduct preliminary screening and make recommendations.
(i) The Programme Review and Validation Committee (PRVC) reviews the proposals from Schools for new award-bearing programmes or submissions from Schools for programme revalidation at the regular intervals set by the Senate. For the University's non-credit bearing courses, the approval right has been delegated to the Committee on Professional and Continuing Education (COPACE), which is required to provide an annual report to the Senate and Management Board .
(ii) The Internal Validation Committee (IVC) considers proposals and reports of all credit-bearing courses, and makes recommendations to Senate on the approval of the first and subsequent presentations of courses.
Similar to the Senate at the University level, each School has its School Board to deal with academic issues. The School Boards have the authority to consider and approve course-related matters delegated by the Senate.
For each award-bearing programme, there is an Advisory Peer Group (APG), which involves external members from the academic and/or business community. The APGs provide advice to the Schools, the Departments and the programme teams on the development of the programmes, as well as initial comments to new programme proposals or revalidation submissions.
The External Programme Assessor (EPA), an expert in the discipline/ specialisation covered by the programme undergoing review, offers expert academic advice to the Programme Review and Validation Committee (PRVC) on areas such as the local relevance and appropriateness of the programme undergoing review, the suitability of the programme structure, and the expected standard of graduates.
The Programme Review and Validation Committee (PRVC), comprising representatives from the Schools (except LiPACE), Registry and a Senate representative, scrutinises programmes under review from a University-wide perspective. The Committee meeting chaired by Provost addresses such matters as the ability of the programme team and academic unit involved to support the programme, the programme's appropriateness in the HKMU context, and its comparability with similar programmes on offer elsewhere in Hong Kong.
Feedback from graduates is collected every year through the annual graduate surveys. Before revalidation of individual programmes every five or six years, past graduates are approached to provide feedback. Employers are also contacted to provide feedback to evaluate the extent to which the graduates have achieved the learning outcomes of the respective programmes. Feedback collected and programme teams' responses are reported during programme revalidations.
An External Examiner (EE) is appointed for a discipline of courses. The EEs are expected to review individual courses' samples of marked examination scripts, provide comments on student performance, the standard of assessment/script marking, and suitability of a course's assessment arrangements against the intended learning outcomes. As subject specialists, the EEs are also expected to provide feedback concerning macro development of the discipline.
In the development of new distance learning courses, an External Course Assessor (ECA) is involved to provide recommendations when no relevant internal subject expertise can be identified.
The course evaluation survey is carried out at the end of every course's presentation in a term. The survey provides a snapshot of overall student satisfaction with different aspects of the courses ranging from course content, materials, instruction, lecturers and tutors, to assessment and learning resources. The results are made available to the Schools after each course evaluation exercise. The results as well as the feedback from the academic staff responsible for the courses are required in the course reports.
During a term, academic staff responsible for the courses may make periodic classroom visits to monitor the activities of individual teaching staff. The results will be made available to the Schools, and will be discussed at the Staff–Student Consultative Committees, for further improvement in the course's next presentations. Any issues identified by the Schools will be recorded in the annual School Reports to be brought forward for consideration by the Internal Validation Committee.
