Abstract

This paper examines the activities and strategies of European Higher Education Quality Assurance Agencies (QAAs) and their use of learning outcomes as a means to make higher education quality transparent. Literature contends that learning outcomes provide useful indications of quality for a variety of stakeholders and for numerous purposes. Yet, there is a gap in both literature and policy understanding of how impactful learning outcomes have been in supporting educational improvement, coordination, transparency or any other intended goals. Given the considerable attention, political, and financial support devoted to competency-based education and learning outcomes, the question of ‘impact’ is critical. This paper triangulates the results of a survey of European QAA’s, case studies of evaluations of learning outcomes policies, and a meta-evaluation of those cases to examine the types of strategies the European QAA’s employ and examine the impact of elements such as goals and audience. The results demonstrate the limited impact of learning outcomes, which leads to a discussion of the learning outcomes activities as a policy problem. The findings of the study suggest that the potential of learning outcomes as a transparency tool is hindered by learning outcomes policies that are misaligned with goals, misapplied in implementation, and misdirected in goal choice.

Highlights

  • This study presents an initial foray into the evaluation of the learning outcomes policies in Europe

  • While only establishing a baseline using eight cases, it suggests that at this time there are no clear promising practices in learning outcomes policies for transparency or any other goal

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Summary

Introduction

The introduction of “evidence-based medicine” in the 1980s sparked a revolution in medical practice and training when carefully designed controlled-trials were used to assess the efficacy of existing medical practices. The new model was met with resistance and hostility by the medical community as it undermined leadership and authority, and often contracted training, knowledge and firm beliefs of the establishment. It challenged the long-held tradition of “eminence-based medicine”, where a doctor’s prominence in all matters was assumed, whose advice was never questioned, and whose practice was considered an art form as much as a science. Higher education has long been in the domain of “eminence-based practice”, where classically trained professors, elite institutions and historical reverence guide most practices inside and outside of the classroom. Education is largely considered an art; with interpersonal actions in the classroom evoking sentiments of a mystical “black box” of teaching and learning upon which no outsider should tread

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