Educational - Ozean Publications

European Journal of Educational Studies 2(2), 2010them including the identification of good practice; the extent to which teaching staff bylaws and institutional regulations areobserved by the responsible staff members; the involved method of external assessors; a summary of stakeholders’assessment and response of teaching staff/administrators to external assessors’ reports and stakeholders’ assessments;proposals for programme development including programme structure, course, staff development based on course andprogramme specifications, academic standards, benchmarks, external assessors and stakeholders assessment; and proposal foran action plan incorporating all corrective actions based on programme analysis, time framework for its implementation,responsible individuals and needed resources. (Sanyal: 2007, pp. 73-74)CoursesAssuring and accrediting the quality of courses in the Department of Social Group Work, Faculty of Social Work in HelwanUniversity in Egypt requires from QAAHE agency to advise Faculty of Social Work in Helwan University in Egypt toprepare for course quality assurance specifications. Some of these specifications are course quality assurance report, courseassessment system and authorisation from the relevant authority to carry out the course with the prescribed specifications.Course quality report requires covering specific types of information. Illustration of these types follows.Basic Information: Course quality specifications include basic information detailing course description in accordance withteaching staff bylaws.Statistical Information: Course statistical information for quality assurance and accreditation includes: student numbersstarting course; student assessment results including percentages of students passing and failing; and description of studentspassing by marks or scores.Professional Information: Course professional information for quality assurance and accreditation includes: aims of thecourse identifying ILOs which focus essentially on entrepreneurship skills; TLS including self learning; course content withthe number of contact hours allocated for instruction for each topic through each learning method in accordance with teachingstaff bylaws; assessment of students that matches ILOs and assessment methods; list of learning materials including lecturenotes, textbooks and references given in a standard format; facilities required for teaching/learning the course includingphysical facilities and infrastructure; course topics actually covered and the number of hours actually taught as compared withthe specifications, and an explanation of any discrepancies; adopting the TLSs with comments regarding the rationale forchoosing them and a discussion of any discrepancies; students’ assessment of the methods using rules, criteria and anassessment of the effectiveness of the overall assessment in measuring the achievement of ILOs which will probably involveexternal assessors; facilities and teaching materials and their suitability; administration constraints in following the TLSs toachieve the ILOs; results of course assessment by students and the response of instructors to any criticism together withproposals for improvement; external assessors’ comments and instructor responses together with proposals for improvementif necessary; and course quality enhancement proposals with an action plan including the schedule and material and humanresources. (ibid, pp. 72-73)FUTURE DEVELOPMENTAlthough higher Education system in Egypt is of wide capacity including human and material resources, the current pictureindicates the need for further and future development focusing on qualitative factors in the first instance. Higher educationsystem can be divided into three main categories which include: generating human resources via technical colleges requiredfor economic labour development; generating research via faculties of scientific and natural sciences required for scientificdevelopment and generating knowledge via faculties of humanities and social sciences required for social and culturaldevelopment. A brief illustration covering different dimensions of future development follows.- Establishing faculties of quality with departments specifically dedicated to generate human resources specialised andresponsible for creating, enhancing and empowering quality in all educational, economic, social and work sectorsacross the country, with a view to enable these faculties to provide B.A., M.A., Ph.D. in quality so as to createscience of quality in all fields of knowledge.- Establishing ‘Head of Egypt’ in order to collaborate with national government across the country on how interestsand motivations for creating national future development creation operation generally and a highly internationalquality higher education particularly could intersect with, and driven by a powerful national construction of valuesand techniques operating via the proposed ‘Head of Egypt’ as an appropriate initiative and a mechanism throughwhich a national dialogue is to be conducted in order to discuss in parallel and address more systematically nationalambitions, priorities and needs. Such dialogue requires combining and bringing together the greatest geniuses,experts, professors and leaders across the country of Egypt in order to identify and elaborate the pressing nationalneeds theorising, planning, systemising, operating and executing national policies for an ordered, powerful, peacefuland productive society. This head is to create and generate web of ideas, networks of influence, policy frameworks62