The Views of The Quality Ambassadors on Quality Management in Higher Education and the Technological Barriers Encountered

Abstract

In this study, it was aimed to examine the views of quality ambassadors about general structure of quality processes in higher education and technology barriers in depth. For this purpose, the study was carried out based on the case study criteria sampling method which is one of the qualitative research method and therefore the study group consisted of eight participants who were working at a state university in Turkey and involved actively in the quality processes. A semi-structured interview form created by the researchers to collect data. Descriptive analysis was used in the analysis of data. It was found that there were some findings about the advantages of quality processes in higher education such as creation of standardization, inclusion of students in the process, elimination of arbitrariness, and ease of gaining professional skills, while there were the views on the disadvantages of quality processes in higher education, work load, formality of process, failure to meet different demands from students, the difficulty of creating new activity plans. Besides, among the views on the necessity of quality processes in higher education there were such findings as standardization, including students in the process, performance measurement, and communication with stakeholders. Finally, the external (infrastructure problems, resource constraints, vision) and the internal (individual deficiencies, beliefs) technology barriers were identified among the views on technological barriers in achieving goals and objectives in higher education during quality processes.