Educational quality
New educational quality policy from January
At the beginning of the New Year, we will change the way we develop and ensure the educational quality at SDU. The Executive Board has adopted new goals and how they are to be followed up. The focus will be on development and results instead of on controlling initiatives.
SDU has a quality system for education programmes that sets the framework for ensuring that our teaching and education programmes are always of high quality. The quality system includes a policy that describes the goals of the work and a description of how to follow up on the goals. Both the policy and the follow-up are currently under review.
As a result, once the study boards have been constituted in the New Year, together with the heads of studies and the management of the faculties they will be involved in the implementation of the new policy for educational quality at SDU. The policy will come into effect at the turn of the year, along with a new procedure to follow up on the policy’s goals that is close to the education programmes and which operates across management levels.
The new quality system will be simpler, focus more on development than on control, provide more common solutions and ensure better use of resources. Basically, the system will be perceived as more meaningful and not as something that only serves its own logic and maybe even gets in the way of real educational development.
One of the ways to ensure this is through trust in the employees. Pro-Rector Helle Waagepetersen points out that for many years, SDU has built up solid competences and workflows within educational quality. One result of this is that SDU has twice successfully secured national institutional accreditation. However, she adds:
But we are now at a point where it is time to give more responsibility and room for manoeuvre to the study boards and heads of studies in collaboration with the heads of department to develop the educational quality to meet the demands of the future. Good processes in the programme management are essential for us to work purposefully with the education element of Strategy 2030.
The new policy for educational quality and the description of how to follow up on its goals, will entail several changes.
One of the most obvious changes is the new structure of the quality policy, which emphasises the central importance of teaching for students’ academic skills and well-being. In terms of visual representation, the new quality policy is illustrated with a real SDU apple with the three new sub-goals: teaching, education and university.
The ways in which we will work with ensuring and developing educational quality will also change. Cross-cutting follow-up processes involving status meetings will be reduced and integrated with other processes, automaticity will be replaced by holistic assessments and the follow-up will focus more on results than on initiatives.
Pro-Rector Helle Waagepetersen believes that this may be perceived as a major cultural change in the organisation but also as something that is necessary:
Initiating a series of actions is not a goal in itself. We need to look at what works and what we need to know so that we don’t start something without having a clear idea of what we will get out of it and how to follow up. And this applies whether we’re talking about initiatives for entire programmes or about the evaluation of teaching.
Over the next six months, we will work on how programmes, departments and faculties can support the implementation of the adopted changes.
During the spring of 2025, many people at SDU will be consulted on how to work with study board discussions, educational data, teaching portfolios, operationalisation of goals and all the other things that will become the new reality. We must ensure that the changes are not merely adopted on paper, but actually create a better foundation for the development of SDU’s education programmes and ultimately an even higher educational quality.
This is because delivering research-based education programmes and sought-after graduates is one of SDU’s most important tasks. Rector Jens Ringsmose emphasises:
- Our research reaches out and creates value in many ways, for example when we collaborate in partnerships and when our researchers appear in the media. But our major highway for delivering research to society is through the students we educate.
As a result, once the study boards have been constituted in the New Year, together with the heads of studies and the management of the faculties they will be involved in the implementation of the new policy for educational quality at SDU. The policy will come into effect at the turn of the year, along with a new procedure to follow up on the policy’s goals that is close to the education programmes and which operates across management levels.
The new quality system will be simpler, focus more on development than on control, provide more common solutions and ensure better use of resources. Basically, the system will be perceived as more meaningful and not as something that only serves its own logic and maybe even gets in the way of real educational development.
One of the ways to ensure this is through trust in the employees. Pro-Rector Helle Waagepetersen points out that for many years, SDU has built up solid competences and workflows within educational quality. One result of this is that SDU has twice successfully secured national institutional accreditation. However, she adds:
But we are now at a point where it is time to give more responsibility and room for manoeuvre to the study boards and heads of studies in collaboration with the heads of department to develop the educational quality to meet the demands of the future. Good processes in the programme management are essential for us to work purposefully with the education element of Strategy 2030.
The new policy for educational quality and the description of how to follow up on its goals, will entail several changes.
One of the most obvious changes is the new structure of the quality policy, which emphasises the central importance of teaching for students’ academic skills and well-being. In terms of visual representation, the new quality policy is illustrated with a real SDU apple with the three new sub-goals: teaching, education and university.
The ways in which we will work with ensuring and developing educational quality will also change. Cross-cutting follow-up processes involving status meetings will be reduced and integrated with other processes, automaticity will be replaced by holistic assessments and the follow-up will focus more on results than on initiatives.
Pro-Rector Helle Waagepetersen believes that this may be perceived as a major cultural change in the organisation but also as something that is necessary:
Initiating a series of actions is not a goal in itself. We need to look at what works and what we need to know so that we don’t start something without having a clear idea of what we will get out of it and how to follow up. And this applies whether we’re talking about initiatives for entire programmes or about the evaluation of teaching.
Over the next six months, we will work on how programmes, departments and faculties can support the implementation of the adopted changes.
During the spring of 2025, many people at SDU will be consulted on how to work with study board discussions, educational data, teaching portfolios, operationalisation of goals and all the other things that will become the new reality. We must ensure that the changes are not merely adopted on paper, but actually create a better foundation for the development of SDU’s education programmes and ultimately an even higher educational quality.
This is because delivering research-based education programmes and sought-after graduates is one of SDU’s most important tasks. Rector Jens Ringsmose emphasises:
- Our research reaches out and creates value in many ways, for example when we collaborate in partnerships and when our researchers appear in the media. But our major highway for delivering research to society is through the students we educate.