The Quality Assurance Online Knowledgebase (QAOK), launched in February 2017, is an electronic resource for the higher education sector in Hong Kong and abroad. It provides a repository of good practices gathered from local institutions and the international Quality Assurance (QA) community and is intended to serve as a useful information portal for both local and non-local institutions seeking to enhance their internal QA measures as well as for HKCAAVQ in further improving its accreditation practice.
HKCAAVQ strives to support the development of a quality culture in the educational sector in Hong Kong and has successfully obtained funding from the Quality Enhancement Support Scheme (QESS) under the Education Bureau in 2014 to carry out a project titled “Enhancing quality culture and quality assurance in post-secondary education: Trends and Models from International and Local Quality Assurance Practices” to improve quality assurance practices and promote a quality culture within the local post-secondary education sector. The project included organising workshops on international quality assurance perspectives conducted by overseas experts, a series of forums for sharing of good practices among local institutions, and the development of a public web-based knowledgebase, the QAOK, for further dissemination of the good practices for quality assurance. A total of six forums for local operators and six internal workshops for HKCAAVQ staff were funded by the QESS project. The presentation files of the forums are placed in this knowledgebase for public access.
Local higher education institutions and course providers are also invited to contribute case studies of their quality assurance practices for sharing in this knowledgebase to promote and enhance mutual learning.
QAOK covers a board spectrum of good practices in the following areas:
- Academic Leadership
- Institutional Governance and Management
- Programme Development
- Online and Blended Education
- Student Assessment
- Student Engagement
- Student Support Services
- Transnational Education
- Quality Assurance and Enhancement System (Commendations in QAC quality audits)
- Articulation of Appropriate Objectives (Commendations in QAC quality audits)
- Management, Planning and Accountability (Commendations in QAC quality audits)
- Programme Development and Approval Processes (Commendations in QAC quality audits)
- Programme Monitoring and Review (Commendations in QAC quality audits)
- Curriculum Design (Commendations in QAC quality audits)
- Programme Delivery and Learning Environment (Commendations in QAC quality audits)
- Experiential Learning (Commendations in QAC quality audits)
- Assessment (Commendations in QAC quality audits)
- Teaching Quality and Staff Development (Commendations in QAC quality audits)
- Student Participation (Commendations in QAC quality audits)
- Activities Specific to Research Degrees (Commendations in QAC quality audits)
- Language Policy (Commendations in QAC quality audits)
- The Setting and Maintaining of Academic Standards (Commendations in QAC quality audits)
- The Quality of Learning Opportunities (Commendations in QAC quality audits)
- Student Achievement (Commendations in QAC quality audits)
- Quality Enhancement (Commendations in QAC quality audits)
- Postgraduate Provision (Commendations in QAC quality audits)
- Enhancing the Student Learning Experience (Commendations in QAC quality audits)
- Gobal Engagements: Strategies and Current Developments (Commendations in QAC quality audits)
The list of areas above is not exhaustive and may be supplemented from time to time when new topics and content arise.
A special thanks to the Quality Assurance Council (QAC), a semi-autonomous body under the aegis of the University Grants Committee, for contributing the good practices that the QAC Audit Panels have identified in the audits.
The launch ceremony of the QAOK was held on 19 May 2017 and it was well-attended by over 200 guests from the post-secondary sector and the professional bodies. The ceremony was officiated by representatives from the Education Bureau and University Grants Committee, local speakers of forums supported by the QESS, and the Council Chairman and the Executive Director of HKCAAVQ. The overseas speakers of the QESS workshops, who were not able to attend the event, recorded congratulatory video messages in support of the knowledge base. The video messages are available below.
