Unis reclaim the agenda

 It's time to get the government out of the classroom and return quality assessment to teachers. Picture: Kym Smith Source: The Australian

UNIVERSITIES could adopt a sector-wide system for peer reviewing teaching inputs and outputs of disciplines as part of an effort to benchmark and assure quality standards.

A pilot project involving eight diverse universities is under way and is partly about reclaiming the quality agenda amid concerns that government proposals to use generic skills tests to measure academic performance are too simplistic and misleading.

It involves using routine "blind" peer review of not only a university's student assessment but also teaching elements such as curriculum, assessment tasks and marking criteria.

"The fact that this is an initiative that has been taken by universities themselves to lead the agenda rather than have it imposed upon them by a bureaucracy is an important moment in us wanting to claim standards as our own currency and quality as our own currency," said Judyth Sachs, deputy vice-chancellor (provost) of Macquarie University, which is part of the project.

The project, which is being funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, involves the Australian National University, Charles Darwin, Griffith, La Trobe, Macquarie, Queensland University of Technology, the University of Melbourne and the University of Western Sydney. It is being led by Kerri-Lee Krause of Griffith and Geoff Scott of UWS.

It comes as the Group of Eight universities pilot their own project to use external reviewers to vet final year assessment tasks.

The idea of the project is to establish a system of peer review quality assurance using the expertise of academics from different universities to assure standards and drive improvement through the cross-fertilisation of ideas.

Such a system would be a more sophisticated and effective way to assure government and the community of standards.

The details of peer review reports wouldn't be made public; instead, any issues raised would be expected to be addressed by a university's internal processes.

"The fact that the process is being undertaken routinely, across a range of units and disciplines, over time, would be the focus of the public reporting, rather than specific reports of the outcomes within each unit," Professor Krause said.

She said evidence of standards being met would continue to be reflected through a range of indicators such as external accreditation, employability rates, progression rates to higher degrees by research and industry feedback.

Professor Krause said the project allowed universities and staff to learn from each other. "It is as much about capacity building as it is about saying there are comparable standards in terms of content, volume and the experience of the students," she said.

Professor Krause said the project was in part a reaction to government proposals to use a generic skills test, such as the Collegiate Learning Assessment, as a performance indicator.

"We owe it to ourselves as a sector to come up with a viable alternative," she said.

She said generic tests were "troublesome" since they could encourage teaching to the test. She said they also didn't cover broader student outcome, such as leadership and community engagement, and were likely to eclipse other measures in the eyes of the wider community.