Practise what you preach: quality of education in education on quality

Abstract

The quality of teaching should be the central theme in the education on quality management (QM). Delivering bad courses about QM would reduce the legitimacy of the subject, since we do not practise what we preach. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how the quality of education can be enhanced through effective course design based on quality thinking and higher education theory. The study covers three university courses in the field of QM; an introductory course in QM, and courses in Six Sigma and Lean Production, respectively. Each course has been analysed and described in terms of factors affecting student learning and the perceived quality of the courses. The impact of course design on examination results and student evaluation has been studied and compared to historical data. The study demonstrates that course design can have a profound impact on student learning as well as course evaluation. Analysis of the three examples provided in this paper indicates that the QM principles can effectively be used in course design processes. Attention to the principles presented in this paper facilitates the design of courses that enhance learning and ensure higher student satisfaction. The application of QM principles in higher education has a long theoretical tradition. This paper provides three strong examples of how this can be done in practise.