QUALITY ASSURANCE

Quality assurance ensures that academic processes within Oxford College of Business are internally regulated and of international standard.

The quality assurance process uses evidence from Accreditation, Benchmarking, and Surveys to check that strategic goals are achieved, and policies and practices are under continuous review under an overall quality enhancement regime.

Academic Support & Administration is the unit with primary responsibility for the university’s quality assurance matters

Benchmarking aims to:

• Monitor relative performance
• Identify gaps
• Seek fresh approaches to bring about improvements
• Set goals
• Establish priorities for change and resource allocation, and
• Follow through with change processes based on empirical evidence

It can be about broad campus-wide issues or specific matters affecting only one area; it can be:

• Strategic (addressing priority issues), or
• cyclical (addressing a number of areas on a regular basis), or
• ad hoc (taking advantage of an opportunity)

Benchmarking projects can be as simple as a desktop survey of relevant websites, or may involve a formal request for information and/or an agreement with another institution.

Whatever its scope or subject matter, benchmarking is an important element of the OCB’s quality assurance cycle.

Benchmarking attempts to answer the following questions:

• How do the standards we have set ourselves compare to our peers?
• How does our performance measure against the outcomes of national and comparator institutions?
• How can we adapt good practice examples from other institutions to our own organisation?

Core Principles

Benchmarking projects undertaken by the Academic and Administration Division of Oxford College of Business will:

• Support OCB’s mission, values and strategic priorities.
• Be characterised by a commitment to: learning from best practice; implementation of potential improvements arising from the findings of benchmarking projects; and sharing of good practices once projects are completed.
• Be balanced in terms of the value received compared to costs involved in undertaking the projects.
• Have the approval of the relevant manager or unit head.

Code of Conduct

The following should be taken into account when undertaking benchmarking where a request for information is involved:

Confidentiality: All benchmarking exchanges should be treated as confidential and publication and external communication of findings should not proceed without the permission of all partners involved in the project.

Use: Benchmarking information should not be used for other than the express purpose for which it was obtained, prior consent should be obtained from all participating partner.

Exchange: The type or level of information exchanged should be comparable between the benchmarking partners.

Agreement: If a benchmarking agreement is entered into, issues about confidentiality, use and the type and level of information to be exchanged should be included in the agreement.