Journey of QEC from Y Category to W category

Wednesday, August 29 2012

Quality and quality assurance in higher education have become key issues nationally as well as internationally. Quality assurance into the higher education is new vocabulary used over the past decade or so. Quality assurance refers to systematic management and assessment procedures adopted to ensure achievement of specified quality or to improve quality, and to enable key stakeholders to have confidence in the management of quality and the outcomes achieved.

The first job of the QEC (Quality Enhancement Cell) is to make the idea of Self Assessment acceptable and to facilitate the University faculty to assess themselves and improve instead of monitoring them. Ultimate aim of quality education could only be achieved by developing the norms of self evaluation which is possible only through a change in the culture of the University.

The role of Quality Enhancement Cell is to facilitate the academic environment to seek ways towards excellence in Quality of Education by keeping in view the standards and criterion laid down by world renowned peer Educational institutes and HEC, Pakistan.

The University of Management and Technology (UMT) took great pride in being part of this national as well as an international quality journey to enhance quality across the entire University and be able to stand taller at the national as well as the international level after establishing QEC in June 2010.

In the first Quantitative assessment of the QEC conducted by QAA of Higher Education Commission for the period Pakistan (April 2010 to December 2010), UMT scored 50 out of a total of 100 which placed UMT in “Y” category.

In the 2^nd Quantitative Assessment conducted for the period ending December 31, 2011, QEC at UMT scored 58% again in “Y” category.

QEC achieved a milestone to be in the list of “W” category (85 – 100%) by scoring 88% for the period ending June 30, 2012. HEC appreciated the performance of QEC of UMT is progressing in a well organized manner. Following measures were taken in order to achieve the position in “W category”QEC.

Submission of Quarterly progress reports (QPRs) in a timely fashion
Attending the HEC organized Quarterly meetings /events regularly
Completing the SARs (Self Assessment Reports) for 8 programs including BBA, MBA, MBF, M.Com, B.Com, BS – Accounting, BS – Electrical Engineering and BS – Social Sciences with majors in Psychology
Formation of Assessment Teams and conducting the Assessment Exercise of all the relevant programs against which the SARs were established
Creating Assessment Teams Rubric reports, Executive Summaries and Implementation plans against the identified weaknesses
6. Conducting training sessions for Program Team members on “Writing SARs for the identified Programs” and “Conducting Assessments and Writing Rubric Reports”
Publicizing of QEC activities through Intranet

We have achieved this milestone as a team with the enthusiastic, passionate and committed team efforts of the following team members under the guidance of Rector UMT, Dr. Hasan Sohaib Murad.

QEC Team Members: