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Sunday, May 11, 2008

Topic of the Week: Quality in Education

Where is Quality Assurance in U.S. education?

A huge portion of QA is the concept of managing variation in a process. Yet, in my experience there is huge variation in the delivery of higher level education. Instructors deliver material according to the learning style they themselves have and, although there are a few exceptions, most do not consider what teaching style they have.

For example, the university that I currently attend is big on group projects; there is one in every class. They are all very similar: requiring a company analysis and a group paper to be written. Yet, every single class has a different method for analyzing the group's effectiveness, for paper format and content, and for process employed to develop the paper. It's not at all unusual for a group to have a couple of "slackers" who just slide by. In fact, not all that long ago one student graduated and hosted a huge party inviting all the people who'd been on the project with them stating that he couldn't have done it at all without them; if not for the other members work he would have failed. Some statement, eh?

Aside from that there is the registration process, the GPA calculations (which are specific to a campus size), and the programs themselves which vary from university to university. That's not the extent of it either as the variation is seen in secondary ed as well as elementary ed. So... with at all that, I ask again:

Do we have quality in U.S. education?

1 comment:

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