Building QA Systems: The Engaged and Responsible Label (ERL)
The growing importance of university engagement in the context of 21st century challenges in higher education has led to an increasing demand for university engagement, which calls for evaluation and validation. However, the development of effective assessment and validation tools is still at a formative stage.
This paper presents a tool that can measure and evaluate a higher education institution for its engagement and social responsibility. The tool utilises 10 Thematic Areas with 10 Quality Indicators in each area for awarding a quality label (Pass, Merit, Distinction).
Drawing on a review of the literature and analysis of published engagement frameworks, the challenges of measuring and validating university engagement are discussed, the need for a new tool is justified, and the too.l is presented. The authors are building a prototype tool in Excel to automate the evaluation of the process and results that will lead to a fully-fledged web-based tool.
This paper was presented at EQAF and reflects the views of the named authors only.
ISSN: 1375-3797
