Purpose

The purpose of the external assessment is to:
+Determine if the institution or programme is in essential compliance to the standards.
+Validate the database and self-study report and to fill out missing information
+Assist institutions to improve standards and quality enhancement

Constitution

(a) The QA assessment team will comprise
- a chairperson
- a secretary and
- three team members.

(b) The Quality Assurance Division will constitute members of the QA assessment team from those with academic or professional experience who are well known in the fields related to the programme to be assessed, and have been trained in quality assurance assessment.

(c) Team members will be given at least TWO MONTHS notice. The institution to be visited will be notified of the team members. Objection to any team member can be made in writing to the Quality Assurance Division.

(d) Each team member will be responsible for specific tasks during the visit.

(e) The database and self-study report will be given to the assessment team at least TWO WEEKS before the visit.

(f) Each member of the team will be given the document -QA in Public Universities of Malaysia: Code of Practice- to be used as a guide for evaluating the institutional database and self study report as well as for the visit and for preparing their sectional reports. The section of the QA assessment report sassigned to individual team members should be completed on site or sent to the team secretary within 7-10 days of the visit.

Responsibilities

(a) The Chairperson

The Chairperson is the team's spokesperson and is expected to lead the discussion, to collate the opinions of the team members and to be responsible for the QA visit report. The chairperson introduces the QA team to various groups during the visit and and briefly describes the purpose of the visit. He/she ensures that the team members pace their work in consolidating their observations and findings at the end of each day so that their perceptions of the institutional strengths, areas concern and institutional opportunities are refined each evening.

The Chairperson gives the exit oral report summarizing the tentative findings and conclusions of the team to the Dean and/or Vice chancellor of the University and faculty members. This oral report should be given from a written summary finalised on the last evening of the visit.

(b) The Secretary

The secretary will make all the arrangement with the Liaison person, plan the schedule, request for missing or additional information and draft the final report. The secretary should contact the Dean's office to obtain important information that is missing from the database.

The team secretary is expected to complete the draft report shortly after the visit (4 to 6 weeks is optimum). The secretary is responsible for organizing the contributions from the other team members, to ensure that the overall report is coherent, logical, and internally consistent.

If important areas have been omitted from a team member's write-up, it is the team secretary's responsibility either to contact that member for additional details, or to supply the missing content himself/herself.

The team secretary should keep original copies of handouts, database pages, evaluation reports, organisational charts etc. for incorporation, as appropriate, in the final report.

It is useful for the team secretary to compare his/her draft report with the set of strengths and concerns identified by the assessment team, to ensure that all areas are well documented in the text of the report.

Attention should be paid so that comments made are based on due compliance to the quality assurance standards as contained in the Guidelines on Criteria and standards of Bachelors Degree Programme. If possible, the language of the concern should reflect the applicable programme standard(s).

The secretary is responsible for sending the draft report to the Dean for correction of any errors of fact. The final, corrected report (with all appendices) should be sent to the office of the Quality Assurance Division, Level 2, Block B North, Damansara Town Center, 50604, Kuala Lumpur.

(c ) Team members

All members of the assessment team must review the institutional self study report and database. In reviewing the documents, the team should pay attention to the following:
- Whether the database given is complete to give a clear picture of institutional achievement.
- Whether the self-study accurately reflects the database analysis.
- Whether the institutional practices are in compliance with the basic standard of each aspect of the guidelines on criteria and standards.

Team members assist the Chairperson and Secretary in collecting and recording data and observations during the visit. They write the sections of the report assigned to them either during the assessment visit or within one week after the visit and review the draft prepared by the secretary.

Decorum and Conduct

(a) The decorum of the team must be very professional because quality assurance is a peer review process, which is a positive activity, not punitive or fault seeking. The aim is to be helpful to the faculty and the spirit must be collegial.

(b) On arrival, the Chairperson explains the purpose of the visit and the team members introduce themselves.

(c) The team must remember that they are guests of the institution. Rules of courtesy include not being argumentative and confrontational.

(d) The role of the assessment team is to evaluate and they must overcome the temptation to compare the institution with their own. They should not play the role of a consultant.

(e) The team must validate the database and look for consistency in the programme. Five questions need to be answered:
-What are the objectives of the programme? - What has the institution determined the students need to know and do at the end of the programme.
-Has the institution designed a programme to achieve the objectives?
-Has the institution organized its resources to accomplish these objectives?
-Has the faculty accomplished its objectives and will continue to do so?
-What are the evidence?

( f) Some of the information the team should be looking for include:
-The strategic plan which sets out where the institution is heading in the next 5 years - the mission statement, general educational goals, specific objectives and whether these are made known to all stakeholders;
-The design of the programme and whether the course structure and content, the teaching-learning methods and student assessment support the achievement of the objectives
- The resources that are made available and how these are allocated to achieve the objectives;
- The students' opinion about specific courses, supervision, independent study time, recreation and their involvement in providing feedback to the institution
- The motivation and qualification of academic and administrative staff and their involvement in policy formulation.

(g) Everything learned during the visit is ABSOLUTELY CONFIDENTIAL and there must be no sharing of information outside of the report. There must be no other comments apart from the report.

(h) At the end of each day and on the last day of the visit the team meets to concur on the areas of strengths and concerns which must be judged against the standards and presented as an oral report at the exit conference.

Oral Exit Report

(a) An oral report is given to the institution at the end of the visit by the Chairperson of the QA assessment team.

(b) The oral report will highlight the unique areas of strengths and emphasise the areas of concern which are directly related to non-compliance with the standards.

(c ) The Chairperson provides opportunities for the members of the institution to ask for clarification or to provide explanations to points raised in the report. He/She should advise the campus executives that the findings given in the oral report are tentative and do not reflect the final QA assessment report. A panel convened by the Quality Assurance Division would study the QA report and the final report will be issued by the QA Division.

Writing The External Quality Assurance Report

(a) The draft report should be organized according to the suggested format . Primary emphasis should be given to the description and evaluation of the educational programme.

(b) The report should give the team's narrative description and comments in the front part of the report, with references to appropriately selected database sections collated sequentially in the Appendix at the rear of the report. This will clearly differentiate assessment commentary from that of the institution.

(c) Appropriate references should be made to the institutional self-study and database, to document noteworthy institutional strengths and weaknesses. The assessment team's list of strengths and concerns should be supported by documentation in the report narrative, and the deficiencies should be anchored to the standards and criteria.

(d) Figures and tables from the institutional database can be included in the report as appendices. Examples of figures and tables that can be used are given in the suggested format. Team members and the team secretary may add additional materials in the appendix but these should be selected judiciously. Please make a reference in the narrative text to material that is included in the Appendix, e.g., "See charts of organization in Appendix __", "See Appendix __for membership of admissions committee and characteristics of applicants". Show the title and page of the Appendix document in the Table of Contents.

(e) The draft of the report should be completed by the end of the site visit and signatures of all team members obtained. The deadline for team members to submit their write-ups to the secretary is SEVEN DAYS after the visit. Team members should assure that the report faithfully represents team findings and consensus. The team secretary may need to telephone members to reconcile differences.

(f) The team secretary is responsible for completing the final version of the draft report. Please type material on one side of the page only in conventional style.

(g) The team chair and secretary should edit the report for the propriety of attribution to individual faculty members, administrators, or students. While the commentary may be important for documentation, specific persons and departments should, if possible, remain anonymous.

(h) The secretary should send the report to the institution and all team members within 4-6 weeks. Each person must review and correct and/or modify the draft, returning the marked version within one week to the team secretary.

(i) The institution is asked to make corrections to errors of facts only. If the Dean disagrees with the tone or conclusions of the report, discussions should be held with the team secretary. If any points in the draft assessment report remain in contention after informal discussion with the team secretary and chairperson, the dean may submit comments directly to the Quality Assurance Division for incorporation in the final report.

(j) Once the institution has checked the report for accuracy, the errors if any, are corrected by the Secretary and the draft report is sent to the Quality Assurance Division THREE MONTHS after the assessment.

(k) The draft report must be held in confidence and not released to anyone without authorization from the Quality Assurance Division.

(l) The draft report does not necessarily represent the final report which will be issued only after further actions are taken by the Quality Assurance Division.

(m) The assessment results will be made known after the report has been discussed by a technical panel appointed by the QA Division. The final report is sent to the Vice Chancellor with copies to the Dean. The deliberations of the technical panel and the QA report issued by the QA Division are confidential.

(n) The institution is at a liberty to make public the assessment report and details of the Quality Assurance decisions as it deems appropriate.

(o) For the public domain, the Quality Assurance Division will prepare a summarized report about the institution and the QA status.

Rating

A rating system is introduced to assess the degree of compliance to the standards. It also provides tools for universities to determine performance trends and to initiate continuous self improvement activities. A group of universities can also use it to compare their performance on all or some of the nine areas and ascertain their competitive position relative to others.

The rating is the level of performance for each criterion in the aspect or area being assessed. For each criterion, the performance of the university is marked on a five-point scale. Level five indicates the current good practice and reflects more than 90% attainment of basic and quality development standards. Level three is the intermediate level and reflects attainment of basic standards and 40-60% in the quality development standards. Level one is unsatisfactory performance and reflects less than 20% attainment of basic and quality development standards. Objectivity in rating is achieved through the collective expert judgment of peers who are guided by the code of practice.

Procedures on giving a rating
(*Please refer to "Rating for Quality Assurance Report in Public Universities of Malaysia" by QAD. )

A. Detail rating for each aspect or area

For each criterion in the aspect being evaluated the assessors should:

1. Tick the box that best describes the findings for that criterion. (This is a guide for identifying the strength and weaknesses on particular areas.)
2. Based on the distribution of the box, give an overall rating for that criterion.
3. Repeat the process for all the other criteria in a particular area.
4. Give a final rating for the area based on the rating of the different criteria.

B. Summary rating for all nine ereas.

1. Fill up the Rating Summary form (Appendix A).

1. Guidelines for Institutional Internal Quality Assessment

2. Institutional preparation for an External Quality Assessment