All undergraduate and postgraduate research programmes will be included in the Institutional Audit . This includes both MMU ‘home’ programmes and programmes delivered by Collaborative Partner organisations.
The focus will be on how MMU manages the security of academic standards of its awards and of the quality of the learning opportunities it provides to enable students to achieve those standards. In order to test this Audit will focus on:
Key changes that have occurred since the last round of Institutional Audit include:
MMU is preparing for audit through its Institutional Audit Working Group (IAWG). This group had representation from all faculties and service divisions to ensure effective communication across the university (see IAWG members for detail of your contact person).
Peggy Cooke, the Academic Coordinator for Institutional Audit is providing staff briefings (if you feel it would be helpful for your team to gain more information on Institutional Audit please contact Peggy on Telephone extension 6246 or e-mail her on p.cooke@mmu.ac.uk.
This website has been developed to keep you up to date with progress on Institutional Audit and it will be updated on a regular basis.
A range of documentation may be requested by the Audit Team. It is likely that we will only know what documentation is needed during the Briefing Visit that occurs 5 weeks before the Audit Visit. However, we are not asking you to collate any documentation other than that you would collect in the normal course of quality monitoring. Programme leaders will have much of the crucial documentation within Programme Logs. In order to track programme developments it is possible that the Audit Team will want to see Programme Logs from previous years so you should make sure that you have complete copies of the Programme Logs for at least the last three years.
Documentation that may be requested includes:
The QAA are specific in terms of Professional, Statutory and Regulatory Bodies (PSRBs) stating they may access reports from within the six years preceding the audit. If they access these reports then programme teams will need to ensure that any document relating to actions from those reports is also available.
In respect of other documentation you should ensure that a minimum of three years documentation is available. In reality you may have documentation for the previous 5 years, i.e. since your last approval / review event.
Make sure that documentation is collated centrally at programme, department (or equivalent) or faculty level. If we need documentation from you we will contact you at fairly short notice so it is important that colleagues know where that documentation is.
Yes: Any documentation that can be, should be collated electronically. There is no intention to set up, what used to be termed as, a ‘base room’ with a great deal of documentation in paper format. There may be some papers that we have to present but these should kept to a minimum.
The QAA has confirmed the following dates:
Please see the Timeline for Audit Preparations for further details.
The Audit team will agree what meetings they want to hold at the Briefing Visit that will take place 5 weeks before the Audit Visit. They will also identify what that membership should be, so for example they may identify that they want to meet a programme leader, a link tutor, a new member of staff. It is likely that they will only hold 4 or 5 meetings in total with small groups (approximately 8) of staff and students.
Audit trails will be confirmed by the Audit Team at the Briefing Visit which will occur five weeks before the Audit Visit.
Taking into account the information provided in our collaborative provision register the QAA has confirmed that a hybrid audit of Collaborative Provision will be most appropriate for MMU. In the hybrid approach Collaborative Provision will be considered within Institutional Audit but members of the Audit Team will visit up to three partner links between the Briefing Visit and the Audit Visit.
The focus will be on “the use made of external examiners, internal and external review of collaborative arrangements, the Academic Infrastructure and other reference points, the use made of management information including feedback, and other relevant topics” (QAA 2006 Pg 5).
We will receive confirmation of the partner institutions to be visited by 27 July 2009.
The documentation required will include:
QAA will require the documentation by 21 September 2009 but in order to collate the information and submit it to reprographics it must be submitted to CASQE by 1 September 2009.