WORK
AREA
Student
Affairs
For calendar 2007 (more precisely January 2007 to 31 March 2008) the Quality
Assurance Office was guided by its Work Plan with its accompanying budget that was drafted with the support of the Quality Assurance Committee and submitted to the
Provost’s Office for review and approval. The budget was simultaneously submitted to the Chief Financial Officer as requested. The QA Work Plan focused on five work areas, namely Student Affairs, Faculty Affairs, Curriculum and Assessment, Institutional and
QA-Direct Affairs. Other related activities of the office are not summarized here. These include work related to technical assistance to ATLIB institutions upon their request to share with them UB’s work in QA, supporting UB and a few foreign students doing research on or in Belize, serving as an advisor to the Belize National Indigenous Council and coordinating the planning for a new History and Anthropology Program. The latter has been object of its own reports.
ACHIEVEMENTS NOTES
1. Student Evaluation of Instruction (SEI).
With a reviewed SEI questionnaire, we have been updating the report format to include both qualitative and quantitative data. The report for semester 781 included a summary of all previous
SEI reports for each and every UB instructor, full time and part time. For semester 782 we anticipate a more user friendly report format that will very be easy to print (a problem we faced with the 781 report).
1. For semester 891 we anticipate that students will be invited to send in by e-mail their comments on an on-going course during the semester. This will allow for
Deans to address any difficulty that may arise without having to wait for the end of the course.
Challenge faced in particular with the scanning of over 9,000 questionnaires and the keying in of thousands of comments so as to produce the report on a timely basis.
We have been informed that the small scanner we are using is not suitable for this volume of scanning. In the budget proposals for 08-09 we have put forward a request for a heavy duty scanner that will be able to deal with the volume of questionnaires we work with every semester.
Most of the technical work in SEI is provided to us pro bono by Mr. Don
Thompson.

Student
Affairs
(Cont.d)
Curricul um and
Assessm ent
2. Graduate Tracking.
The QA office formulated a plan to obtain contact information from the graduating class of 2007. Regretably the plan did not work since at the day of the graduation practice, the time promised to collect the data could not be accommodated. The QA office has fallen back on the Office of Records to provide us with the data on graduate tracking needed for program review. Again, it is unfortunate that the group of stakeholders most difficult to contact are the UB graduates.
3. Review of Admission Requirements.
Discussions began in a QA Cross Faculty Team headed by the Dean of Students. The loss of drive experienced in the latter part of 2007 and the additional responsibilities on the Dean did not allow for the completion of this activity.
4. Program Specifications Exercise.
The
Faculty of Education and Arts completed all of its
Program Specifications (P.S.) documents while the other faculties did not go beyond the achievement of 2006. The only P.S. documents completed in calendar 2007 were of those 7 programs under program review.
5. Syllabus Writing.
Conducted Syllabus of
Record workshop with new and returning UB full time faculty. Reminded Deans of agreement made in December 2006 that in semesters 672 and 781, each full time faculty member should use the new template and guidelines to produce one syllabus per semester. Regret to report that only the
Faculty of Education and Arts submitted syllabus drafts but none were taken to the Dean’s
“approval” stage.
2. A revitalized UB Alumni Association is said to be functioning. Also Mr. Link has come up with a listing of graduates since
2000 but again the most difficult element in the data base is current contact information.
3. Given that UB is preparing for accreditation, it might be necessary for the
Office of the Dean to continue working on this important activity in collaboration with the Registrar’s Office.
4. We wish to emphasize that most P.S. documents have been drafted but the relevant program teams have not been able to meet to complete the final review and to submit the documents for the Dean’s final review and signature. Have programmed the completion of P.S. documents at the May
QA workshop.
5. Have programmed workshop in May
2008 for all full time faculty on syllabus writing. Will revisit the template to modify the external validation aspect of the requirement to facilitate completion.
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WORK
AREA
Curriculum and
Assessment
(Cont.d)
ACHIEVEMENTS
6. Program Review.
Identified seven academic programs for review, viz., Biology (Associate and
Bachelor), Primary School Teacher Education
(Associate and Bachelor), Pharmacy and Medical
Laboratory Technology (Associate only) and Tourism
Management (Bachelor only). A UB Internal
Academic Standards exercise was undertaken and completed, having consulted with representative samples of UB’s stakeholders. Evaluation instruments were then developed for relevant stakeholders of the programs under review. Up to December 2007 questionnaires were being returned and Institutional documents were being collected to provide the assessment data on which to evaluate the programs.
This exercise is aimed at the improvement of the quality of the programs and at the same time to prepare ourselves for program accreditation.
The internal Academic Standards document was submitted to the Provost for final review and approval.
7. Common Finals Monitoring Exercise . According to UB policy every course with more than one section taught by more than one instructor should prepare a common final examination. Monitoring the implementation of this policy has shown that there are several challenges facing our internal capacity to communicate with one another during the semester.
Reports are produced based on a sample of the examinations produced and recommendations have been submitted to the Provost and Deans for remediation. In most cases, thought, there has been inaction.
8. General Education Core.
A committee of 12 members drawn from the four faculties and led by the
QA office conducted a thorough review of the UB
General Education Core producing a manual that outlines the purpose, objectives, courses etc of this important component of the UB curriculum. The draft was reviewed at Faculty meetings in Belmopan,
NOTES
6. More than half of the projected activities had been completed but as the status of the QA office became unclear, the Self Study Committee seemed to have lost the impetus needed to take this exercise to completion.
With the Provost’s departure, the
President has indicated that the document will be referred to the
Faculty Council for its final review.
7. It is necessary to decide what UB will do to facilitate the implementation of this policy as we now know that some instructors chose not to participate in the collaboration needed to successfully complete the exercise.
8. As with the UB Internal Standards document, this manual is ready for the Faculty Council’s review prior to approval and implementation.
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Faculty
Affairs
Belize City and Punta Gorda and formally tabled at
ATLIB at its January 2008 meeting for inputs from
ATLIB institutions. The manual was formally submitted to the Provost’s Office in July 2007.
9. Faculty Continuing Professional Development .
This continuous activity was limited to workshops organized by the relevant faculties with support as needed from the QA office. Only FMSS and
FNAHSW conducted workshops in calendar 2007.
10. E-Learning . The E-Learning Steering Committee formally instituted in the early part of 2007 continued its work primarily through CKLN in preparing for the offering one course CMPS on line to a number of
Caribbean territories. Within UB, committee members conducted some internal training aiming to facilitate the preparation of more courses on line. At this time
UB is offering CMPS on line at the Belmopan and
Belize City campuses to those students who opt for this mode.
11. Promotions and Tenure Committee . In late
September 2006 a six person committee led by the
QA office began the arduous task of drafting a UB
Promotions and Tenure Manual with policies, regulations and guidelines for implementing a vigorous agenda to promote quality improvements in teaching/learning, service and research at UB. The committee completed its work in late May 2007 after conducting formal reviews of the draft at special faculty meetings in Belmopan, Belize City and Punta
Gorda. The draft manual was submitted to the
Provost’s Office in July 2007.
9. The unfortunate situation that obtains is that none of the faculties can find the time during the regular semester for in-house training workshops. The only two
“windows” available are the two weeks following the submission of grades before full time faculty go on leave and the one week when they return for the new academic year before the beginning of advising and registration.
10. The ELSC is an action-oriented committee working with a vigorous work plan. The President’s vision calls for a highly pro-active elearning agenda. Thought the committee is made up with representation of the four faculties and the QA coordinator, I should note that Mr. Antonio Crespo and
Mr. Charles McSweaney have undertaken the lion share of the work that has led to the achievements in this area. The QA office has been primarily focused on quality assurance aspects of this activity.
11. This draft manual “fleshes out” the new “salary scales and rank” document approved by the Board in
2007. The Board directed that the
Provost and H.R. Director work to integrate both documents but that exercise was not conducted. This document may be reviewed by the
Faculty Council but it should still be integrated with the salary scales and ranking document alluded to above and rationalized with UB’s teaching work load and research policies.
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Institutional
Affairs
QA Direct
Affairs
12. ATLIB-National Articulation Framework
Committee . At its late September 2007 meeting
ATLIB formally endorsed a recommendation for the need to establish a working committee to produce a national articulation framework for tertiary institutions in our country. The QA coordinator was selected as a co-chair. The work has commenced and to March 2008 the committee has had four working sessions that have produced an outline of a manual and the work has been distributed among its members.
13. Institutional Issues . Assisted the Provost’s Office in assembling a list of areas of concern from students and faculty, working with a template on how to address the concerns. Had a one-day workshop to provide opportunity for non-academic managers to participate in the exercise.
14. QA Structure . Established a structure with its corresponding TORs for institutionalizing QA at UB.
15. QA Motto and Logo Competition
8 April 2008
. The competition’s rules were discussed and agreed upon.
The competition was placed on hold in September
2007.
12. This is a very important activity that will help to improve the working relationship between
ATLIB and UB and at the same time facilitate student mobility from our feeder institutions to UB programs.
13. Not certain if anything came out of this exercise.
14. The Cross Faculty Team and the
QA Committee did not function well in semester 781. There has to be commitment and good planning for better allocation of time for these committees to become functional.
15. The QA office needs to be better defined in the UB organogram so that it becomes clear how it is meant to operate within the system.
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