Peter Looker, Former Head of Teaching, Learning, and Pedagogy at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, used to engage in faculty development and express his views on lectures. He advised educators to consider looking toward the top of the lecture theater to include all students, even those in the back rows, and to project their voices effectively. In a presentation, he discussed Quality Assurance Frameworks and their potential impact on improving learning and teaching environments, rather than just measuring the status quo.
Looker believed that universities needed radical change and emphasized the need to break free from the traditional research and teaching dichotomy that constrained innovation. He noted that despite significant changes in the world, many aspects of universities had remained unchanged. He saw potential in Quality Assurance Frameworks to drive positive changes and elaborated on his ideas during the presentation.
He criticized current Quality Assurance Frameworks for their shortcomings, citing examples from large-scale audits in Singapore and Australia. He observed that universities often struggled to prepare for these audits and questioned whether they measured the right aspects of education. He suspected that many measures were geared more towards administrative requirements than enhancing the teaching and learning experience. He advocated for a redirection of focus towards improving the quality of education.
Looker highlighted two concrete examples to illustrate his points. First, he discussed the importance of course outlines being student-centric rather than bureaucratic, addressing students directly instead of referring to them in the third person. Second, he criticized the use of student evaluations of teaching as a basis for teaching appraisal and incentives, arguing that they often served administrative purposes more than genuinely assessing teaching quality.
He recommended reading Louis Deslauriers’ work, which showed that students’ perception of learning did not always correlate with actual learning outcomes. He suggested that Quality Assurance Frameworks should encourage teachers to become learners of their own teaching and reflect on their methods, fostering continuous improvement.
He concluded and presented a simplified model of a Quality Assurance Framework that emphasized the importance of research-informed teaching, faculty development, incentives, rewards, and coherent policies and procedures to create a holistic environment focused on enhancing teaching and learning quality. He stressed the need for these elements to align and work together effectively.
