Creating and Maintaining a Culture of Quality Improvement Webinar

  • Date:September 21st, 2021  
    08:00 am
     - 
    10:00 am
  • Location:Online

Institutions are beginning to seek institutional accreditation and improved quality of operation across all parts of the school.  Increasingly, programs seek  required external validation via accreditation by both national and international groups.  Thus, leadership at all levels must embrace and rethink efforts related to quality improvement, i.e.,  continuous improvement.  Additionally, after an AUN-QA evaluation, either institutional or program, leadership must address areas of concern raised by the evaluation report.  Such changes may require new approaches to processes so the challenge is to create such change in an efficient, harmonious manner where quality is not just a leadership responsibility.  This workshop will provide ideas about creating a “culture of quality” at all levels of an institution.  The use of PDCA cycles, either both the institutional level and program level, as a mechanism to either rectify past AUN-QA findings OR serve as a proactive tool enabling successful preparation an evaluation will be explored.

Instructors: 

Dr. Scott Danielson -- Arizona State University

Dr. Scott Danielson, P.E, is a faculty member in the Polytechnic School of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University (ASU).  Before returning to the faculty, Dr. Danielson was an Associate Dean for almost four years in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering and the College of Technology and Innovation.  Before assuming these Associate Dean roles, he had been an engineering technology department chair at ASU for over 13 years.  He has been active in different Vietnam projects, including serving as lead in several BUILD-IT core areas.  Before BUILD-IT, he worked on the USAID-funded Vocational and University Leadership and Innovation Institute (VULII) and the HEEAP projects in Vietnam.  He also a team member on a project in Indonesia doing similar work. He has had leadership roles in American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) serving as chair of two different divisions--the Mechanics Division and the Engineering Technology Division--and received the Isadore T. Davis Award in 2020.  Within ASME, he served on various committees and as a member and co-editor of the Vision 2030 Task Force.  He was awarded the ASME Ben C. Sparks Medal in 2009 and 2013 (team award) and ASME Fellow status in 2020.  His service with ABET includes being an evaluator for three technical societies (for both the Engineering Accreditation Commission and the Engineering Technology Accreditation Commission), an Engineering Technology Accreditation Commission member and officer, including serving as chair for 2020 - 2021.  He has served two short terms on the ABET Board of Directors.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dinh Thanh Viet, Director of Educational Quality Assurance Department, the University of Danang

Dr. Viet has been working at the University of Danang (UD) for 24 years. He currently serves as the Director of Educational Quality Assurance Department and Secretary of the University of Danang’s Council. He received PhD degree in Electrical Engineering at Vinnytsia National Technical University, Ukraine in 1997. He is the author and co-author of three books, two patents and more than 100 papers published in scientific journals and conferences in the field of electric power system and renewable energy. Dr. Viet was a visiting scholar at Washington State University, USA (2007-2008) and Grenoble Institute of Technology, France (2013). In 2010, being the Dean of Department of Electrical Engineering, Danang University of Technology (DUT), he participated in the Higher Engineering Education Alliance Program (HEEAP) project and for the first time learned about Quality Assurance (QA) at Arizona State University (ASU). Then, since 2014, Dr. Viet has led the Department of Quality Assurance, UD. He has built UD’s Internal Quality Assurance (IQA) system, managed internally institutional and program assessment at the UD, involved in international QA projects such as VULII, BUILD-IT (with ASU), TrainIQA, MoI (with DAAD-Germany). From 2015 to 2019, he also served as Vice Director at the Center of Educational Accreditation, UD. By September 2021, the UD had had 31 programs accredited by AUN-QA, CTI, and national accreditation organizations. Dr. Dinh Thanh Viet has also been a well-respected expert in learning outcomes assessment for the academic staff at the UD and several universities in Vietnam. In May 2021, the book “Curriculum Development, Quality Assurance and Student Learning Outcomes Assessment” by authors Dinh Thanh Viet and Tran Thi Ha Van was released to serve QA activities in Vietnam’s higher education.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Le  Ngoc Quynh Lam, Center for Education Accreditation, Vietnam National University – Ho Chi Minh (VNUHCM)

Dr. Lam serves as acting director of Center for Education Accreditation, Vietnam National University – Ho Chi Minh (VNUHCM).  She has been working as an assessor for assessing both program and institution levels according to the standards of MOET. She was head of quality assurance office, HCM University of Technology – VNUHCM.

 

Agenda
Time Details
7:45 – 8:00 am Registration and Entry Into Zoom Room
8:00 – 8:05 am Welcome to the Webinar
8:05 – 9:00 am Culture of Quality Improvement
Continued success in achieving and maintaining AUN-QA recognition should entail creating and utilizing a culture of quality improvement. Continuous quality improvement requires an organization/program to be constantly seeking ways to improve the educational environment and student learning. Participants will engage in guided discovery of the characteristics of a culture of quality improvement and guidelines for implementation of operating practices that support such a culture. An example of how one US-institution has implemented a culture of quality focused on student learning will be discussed.
9:00 – 9:30 am Program Focus: PDCA Cycle to Address Program Shortcoming
Using an example from AUN-QA program evaluation report, participants will be guided in devising a PDCA response to assessor’s comments related to a program’s quality system.
9:30 – 9:50 am Institutional Focus: PDCA Cycle to Address Institutional Shortcoming
After reading an example from a recent Vietnamese AUN-QA institutional evaluation report, participants will outline a possible PDCA response to assessor’s comments related to an institutional quality system.
9:50 - 10:00 am Q&A before Webinar Wrap-up