Degree education

The quality management procedures for degree education are functional with a very good example of implementation of a plan-do-check-act quality cycle. The quality system produces relevant information that is used for developing the degree education but the use of information is not as systematic when corrective actions are planned and implemented. The internal and external stakeholders are properly involved in quality management while the involvement of the external stakeholders remains informal. The quality management of key support services requires further attention in order to develop a systematic and coordinated approach.

The quality management of degree education is at a developing stage.

Functioning of the quality management procedures

The University of Oulu has set out its objectives in line with those of the Ministry of Education. The university provides graduates, post-graduate and doctoral programmes, as well as professional further, continuing and open education, across nine fields. The fields of education are aligned with areas of research excellence, described by the university as being an integral part of its scientific activity.

The University of Oulu has identified six strategic objectives for the development of degree education during 2016–2020:

1. Improving the attraction of the educational offer and student engagement 2. Promoting smooth studying processes

3. Modern, digitised learning environments and pedagogic development 4. International studying experience

5. Structure supporting cooperation with working life 6. Systematic doctoral training

At the strategic level, the annual planning and negotiation process, supported by the TATU system (see chapter 4.1), is the main quality management tools that translates strategic goals to faculty and unit level targets, which are then followed up during the interim reporting and in the next annual negotiations. Based on the interviews, the strategic objectives are specific, clear, relevant and timely but the audit team suggests that to be fully operational, these objectives could be better aligned with the targeted performance indicators thus making implementation and monitoring easier.

The Vice Rector of Education has overall responsibility for the degree education’s quality management; Education Deans have a similar responsibility at the faculty level. After the change to a research-unit based organisation, the educational programmes do not form their own units but operate in a matrix organisation model. To manage this structure, the University has recently appointed programme directors to be in charge of the degree programmes, and who must negotiate the allocation of the teaching loads with the research units. This system is quite recent, and the university has not yet thoroughly analysed the consequences of this new structure. The audit team regards the appointment of programme directors to help strengthen programme management as a good practice. However, based on the interviews, the programme directors should still be better empowered in their positions in order to ensure smoother delivery of the programmes. The programme directors are often only spending a portion of their time (typically 25%, sometimes up to 50%) in this role while a significant portion of the quality workload falls on this role. This creates a tension between responsibilities and workload. Further attention is therefore required and the creation or development of new support services, or increasing the time allocated for the Program Directors´ tasks could be considered.

Degree programme committees are in charge of designing the curricula and the learning outcomes.

The committees are also in charge of monitoring the implementation by collecting data and conducting annual reviews. During the audit visit, the team received evidence of how these reviews lead to improvement in the degree programmes. Based on that evidence, the quality management procedures for degree education seem to be functioning very well for bachelor and master programmes. The PDCA cycles are generally well implemented and managed at the appropriate level, with a clear definition of roles and responsibilities of the different actors.

The University of Oulu is systematically collecting information about the degree education:

progression and completion, international students, share of students completing 55 ECTS, student feedback, employability surveys, etc. The information is easily available in the SISU portal.

However, during the interviews, the audit team observed variable practices in analysing this data or using them to drive the necessary changes.

Students feel that there are sufficient formal and informal platforms for providing feedback.

Students have access to feedback surveys available at course, programme, university and national levels. The audit team also confirmed that students feel that their feedback is sufficiently taken into consideration and followed by improvement measures. Among others, examples of curriculum revision and the introduction of so-called working life learning, reorganisation of courses in doctoral programmes and widening the accessibility of university facilities to students were given in the interviews. The audit team views the encouragement of staff, students and external stakeholders to provide feedback to improve the quality of degree programmes as a strength. The

university has managed to create a supportive environment that encourages open dialogue and the flow of feedback. Students feel that they can influence what goes on in their programmes, although at the course level the impact of student feedback could still be improved as based on the interviews, the implementation of the feedback at present can considerably depend on the individual teacher’s motivation, and varies across the university. While the collection of student feedback is systematic, the quality of the surveys could be improved, particularly the course feedback survey where the form in the audit team’s opinion does not meaningfully cover all the aspects related to teaching and the learning environment.

The promotion of smooth studies is shared by the university community. The tutoring system for students, including teacher and peer tutors, is working well and enables individual support for students and their individual study plans. There are also one-to-one development discussions on the progress of individual students and staff towards their personal development plans. Efforts have recently been made to tackle the high number of students who do not acquire 55 ECTS per year. However, the audit team observed often some acceptance of current performance levels, and that the current progression and level of completion receives insufficient attention. Only occasionally, a clear and systematic analysis is performed to understand why students are unable to reach 55 ECTS. The audit team recommends that the university addresses the matter with a systematic action plan. The plan should take into account the many opportunities for improvement that exist, depending on each particular programme, in terms of developing an enhanced student-centred learning experience for all students. It could also serve in making the student learning experience more consistent across faculties and academic units.

Regarding doctoral education, the University of Oulu has recently significantly re-organised its university-level graduate school (UniOGS) with the aim of better harmonising doctoral training and offering modules covering transversal skills or competences. The audit team holds that the creation of a single doctoral school for the whole university is a significant achievement and is already enhancing the quality and consistency of the student experience. The quality management system of the doctoral studies is therefore improving but is still in a transitional situation. It requires further development in terms of stating the learning objectives and outcomes of each doctoral programme, not limited to the transversal 20 ECTS modules that are coordinated by the UniOGS. The audit team recommends that the responsibilities of UniOGS for the quality management of doctoral education should be strengthened to include the collection and analysis of information about progression, completion and employability.

The attractiveness of the educational offer is a concern for the Oulu region as a whole. To address these challenges, the university has intensified their information sessions and developed new activities particularly towards primary and secondary schools. Based on the interviews, these actions are not yet fully planned and developed and further coordination work will be necessary when they require the commitment of several key support services. The University may also consider increasing the role of external stakeholders in this regard as they share this very important concern.

A clear strength is how the university has developed policies and conditions to strengthen internationalisation, including the recruitment of staff and students, mobility, research collaboration and assessment. Arrangements allow students to easily access all information concerning mobility,

and to systematically transfer credits. In order to further develop their international attractiveness, the university should continue developing more systematic communication in English aimed at international students and staff members (see also 3.2). A systematic approach should seek to ensure a more even quality level when, for example, the same programme is delivered both in Finnish and in English. Appropriate English training should be made available to faculty members and staff when necessary.

Participation in quality work

The formal involvement of staff in university, faculty and programme level committees and boards is evident. The committees and boards are operational and committed to the quality work. In addition to the official bodies, examples of joint development work done by teachers within a faculty were given in the interviews. Additionally, individual teachers have autonomy and responsibility for quality in developing their own teaching.

Students have active representatives in the committees and boards at all levels of the organisation.

Beyond the involvement of the student representatives, however, the students’ role is limited primarily to giving feedback through the various feedback systems. While the audit team finds the feedback culture of the university a clear strength, the team suggests that the university identify more appropriate and useful channels of communications to ensure students are active throughout different phases of the PDCA cycle.

The participation of external stakeholders is visible, but it relies too much on informal contacts.

The audit team recommends that their involvement is developed to be more systematic and significant in its influence and impact.

In order to ensure that the quality culture is more motivating to students and external stakeholders, the audit team suggests the university should communicate the actions and impacts more systematically. Making analysis reports and outcomes easily available is especially pertinent in cases where students or external stakeholders are surveyed.

Quality management of key support services

The university support services have recently been restructured. These changes have met with broad support, and there is a high level of satisfaction across the university community. Based on the interviews, further development is proposed, including improving the services from the user’s perspective and developing user feedback channels. The feedback systems serve as a useful tool for quality management in support services, but they require better integration and co-ordination in the future. Likewise, the development and implementation of common principles should be addressed. However, the university is well aware of these needs and is planning actions for coordinated development of the support services.