Attitudes of Internal Educational Quality Assessors at the Course Level towards the Information Systems for Quality Assurance at Kasetsart University

Abstract

The objectives of this research were to examine the assessors’ attitudes towards the information systems for internal educational quality assurance at the course level and to study guidelines for conducting training activities for the internal educational quality assessors at the course level. It was quantitative and qualitative research. Its sample consisted of 57 internal educational quality assessors at the course level. The research instrument was a questionnaire and the data were analyzed in terms of per cent and arithmetic mean and content analysis for analyzing open-end question.

The research results were found that attitudes of internal educational quality assessors at course level found the information systems for quality assurance at KU, in overall at the moderate level ( = 3.11, S.D. = 0.76). Results of qualitative data analyses revealed as follows: 1) The highlights of the KU-TQF were that it was a system that can retrieve information at any time and it helped in collecting data for course management and the points to be developed were that all databases should be linked together; that the assessors should be able to access the information in each system having the data linked together and that the system should be stable. 2) The highlight of the QAIS was that it helped to obtain information for evaluation from the responsible agencies directly meanwhile some points to be developed were that its database was not related to the KU-TQF; some of its information were not up-to-date and all databases should be linked together. 3) The highlights of the CHE QA Online were that it allowed the course performance to be examined and it helped in collecting data for course management and the points to be developed were that the system should be stable; all databases should be linked together and data entries should not be duplicated and data errors should be minimized.

Recommendations were as follows: The university should link all 3 information systems, there are   KU-TQF, the QAIS and CHE QA online together and should improve them all in terms of their inputs, processes and outputs to be more efficient and effective for the internal educational quality assurance at the course level. In addition, those internal assessors should be improved through training activities to get knowledge and skills in the information systems for internal educational quality assurance.