Organisational self-assessment
Video resource
A video resource is available showing an international education expert discussing capacity building and other aspects of evaluation.
Using self-assessment in your organisation
Effective self-assessment will have a number of key features. The process below is a guide only and offers a way to approach self-assessment systematically and from an organisational view.
This high-level approach to self-assessment can be tailored to suit individual TEOs and is represented in the figure below.
Stages of a Self-Assessment
Ultimately, self-assessment is about understanding how well your organisation is achieving its educational outcomes. You will be interested in asking questions that enable you to build up a picture of how well this is being done.
Planning
Select an appropriate focus
You should develop an approach that systematically works through all aspects of your business over a defined period of time (at least every four years). Depending on the size and available resources, it may take several years to cover all aspects of your organisation.
It is recommended that you focus initially on a manageable number of important areas, to help you develop and refine your method and approach. You can broaden the scope progressively as you develop expertise and as resources allow. It is likely that you will already have some of the processes in place to gather data in the area(s) you have selected.
The area(s) of focus you choose should be of sufficient relevance or importance to learner outcomes to warrant the effort involved.
Starting with a narrow area of focus enables you to consider what data is particularly useful to you in undertaking the investigation and for your business and planning.
| "It's all about knowing what your organisation is about and what the most important things are you are trying to do. Once that's clear, your antennae become tuned and you can start to collect evidence in a whole wide variety of ways." TEO staff member |
Examples of areas to begin with include:
- a particular learner group, e.g. international learners
- programmes and/or services where there have been complaints
- part or all of a specific programme
- an area that is strategically important to the organisation
- high priority or high-stakes programmes or processes
- important national or regional programmes
- programmes with large enrolments
- pilot programmes and new initiatives, especially those that may be expanded if successful
- areas or programmes that are experiencing problems
- language, literacy and numeracy initiatives.
The plan needs to be sufficiently flexible to enable you to adjust your priorities if new issues emerge or the original focus area is subsequently shown to have significant impacts across the organisation as a whole, e.g. the adequacy of learner support.
Getting to the Essence of Self-Assessment
Take a strategic view across the organisation
Your self-assessment activities should reflect the purpose and goals of the organisation, which will be based on the needs and aspirations of your learners and other interested parties.
They also need to make explicit the educational outcomes you are trying to achieve. This set of outcomes provides the basis for testing:
- how well you achieve your educational outcomes
- what factors impact on the achievement of these outcomes
- what other information is needed and what steps need to be taken to obtain this.
Use a collaborative approach
Effective self-assessment will engage a wide range of people at all stages of the process, to ensure a broad view across the organisation. That includes the initial planning phase.
Senior management need to be involved to drive change within the organisation. Teaching staff, support staff, learners, employers and communities should be involved too.
Small organisations will be able to involve all staff directly. Larger organisations may need to work through a steering group, and include self-assessment as part of a programme of work.
"You can't be complacent. You need to be honest and look at your own situation really hard and see what you need to do to improve" TEO staff member |
Involving a wide range of people across the organisation not only helps to understand and address issues but also enhances commitment, ownership and "buy-in".
Allow time
Be realistic about the time you will need for each area to be explored appropriately. It is important to anticipate the unexpected, such as a need for extra data or more investigation than initially planned.
Involving a wide range of staff also requires careful time management. For example, timetable issues can make it hard for staff from different parts of the organisation to meet.
Page updated: 01 September 2009