Quality Assurance System in Higher Education in Georgia Assessment as One of the Key Aspects in the Quality Assurance System Lela Turmanidze 1, Nana Mazmishvili 2 BaTumi Shota Rustaveli State University (Assistant professor, Batumi, Georgia) BaTumi Shota Rustaveli State University (Associate professor, Batumi, Georgia) Abstract The article deals with the thorough analysis of how quality assurance standards are followed by the educators in higher education institutions in Georgia with the particular focus on the compliance between the assessment systems embedded in the frames of the Bologna process and Georgian education area. The research is targeted at revealing the real picture as far as the assessment concerns as well as gives the detailed status of the efficiency of the assessment system and the related problems. Keywords: Quality, Assessment, Weak points, Strong sides, Standards; Social welfare for all over the world, success of global economy depends on a strong and quality education to a very great extent. Even more, education is the key role player in building up the civilization with the full understanding of the term. Student achievement is the fundament the strong economy of the country and the world is built on. Correct understanding of the academic success in the university students by the professors and the other stakeholders closely involved in the education process is essential to realize how vital it is to have the higher education based on high standards and how it could be assured through looking for something universal and effective tool which could work every time and everywhere. Cultivating highly educated and competitive young people that is or at least should be the top priority of all educational institutions can be achieved only in case quality is understood properly and strictly followed by all educators. On top of what is given above equal opportunities on the universal level should also be considered to be the key aspect in assuring sustainability of the process of building the civilization and developing the high standards of life since every single successful graduate independently from his/her origin, university they study at, religious or ethnic background equally contribute to the welfare of the mankind. The primary goal of the Bologna Process that started with signing the declaration on June 19 1999 by the Ministers of Education and Science from 29 European Countries in Bologna the oldest university city in the whole world, was to create the unified European educational area attractive and internationally competitive what can be achieved through ensuring close contacts and intercompliance among various European educational institutions and systems [1; pp. 6]. Georgia was recognized to be the member of the Bologna process on May 19-20 2005 by the Ministers of Education of 40 countries and international organizations in Norway [5; pp. 2]. Parties involved in signing of the above mentioned declaration realized that the quality of education is the predominating factor that has a lion share in contributing to the development of the European area of education. Consequently it became the core task to support and push the process improvement of the quality of education on the institutional, national and European levels. Furthermore education institutions were recognized to be the direct responsible for the quality of education that will help in creating and basis for the real reporting of the academic system in the national system of the quality assurance [1;pp 12]. Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area issued under the Bologna Process in Helsinki in 2005 happen to be the backbone of all the leading rules and regulations that should be applied in the quality assurance context and which contains the principles quality assurance should be based on.
The basic concept and idea of the Bologna process and drafting of Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area is clearly demonstrated in the following statement Quality assurance in higher education is by no means a European concern. All over the world there is an increasing interest in quality and standards, reflecting both the rapid growth of higher education and its cost to the public and the private purse. Accordingly, if Europe is to achieve its aspiration to be the most dynamic and knowledge-based economy in the world (Lisbon Strategy), then European higher education will need to demonstrate that it takes the quality of its programmes and awards seriously and is willing to put into place the means of assuring and demonstrating that quality. The initiatives and demands, which are springing up both inside and outside Europe in the face of this internationalization of higher education, demand a response [Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area 2009 10) [1; pp. 10]. In order to put the above mentioned into practice and be able to explore the world of education some principles appeared to be necessary to be defined. Therefore the document contains a comprehensive definition of these fundamental principles together with the defined standards and relevant guidelines. These principles include: Policy and procedures for quality assurance; Approval, monitoring and periodic review of programmes and awards; Assessment of students; Quality assurance of teaching staff; Learning recourses and student support; Information systems; Public information [1; pp. 7] In order to get maximum benefit from the document and achieve high quality in education it is vital to have thorough understanding of all standards and maintain continues fulfillment of the task in compliance with those standards and guidelines that is by far difficult to ensure to the full extent since it depends on numerous aspects that appear to hamper the smooth implementation of the process internally or externally [5; pp. 2]. The objective of the presented research is to highlight the importance of the relevant implementation of key principles defined above in ensuring high quality of performance in higher education institutions. The research focuses on the critical role of the assessment and the complexity of relevant fulfillment of all the requirements and standards of the student assessment that is one of the major parts of the quality assurance. Based on the practical experience in dealing with the assessment of quality in Georgian higher education institutions, by one of the authors of the given research as the expert in the field, we target at revealing the critical points in the assessment of the students that could be observed in Georgian reality. More precisely we aim at carrying detailed analysis of the existing status in the student assessment in Georgian education world to reveal typical weak points in the practical implementation of work that results in incompliance with the European standards and hamper the overall success on the university as well as the national levels. Thorough investigation of the existing accessible documentation of our as well as some other Georgian universities gave us quite reliable basis for making relevant conclusions on the strong and weak points in the assessment system in our country, start open discussion about the problems we all have to face and finally share our ideas on the possible solutions and measures that could be applied to adjust the system to the standards and the national needs and meet the challenge of high quality performance as well as the sustainability in the quality assurance. Student assessment is one of the most essential components of the higher education which has a great influence on the student career. Thus it is always important to assess the students based on the qualified approach. Moreover, assessment provides the universities with the valuable information on the effectiveness of teaching/learning processes. Students assessment must be based on criterion, rules and procedures published publicly which consider the sustainability of the assessment process. The process: Should provide the possibility to measure learning outcomes and other objectives of the programme. Should the accompanied by the clear and public criteria of marking system;
Should be carried out by those who understand the role of assessment in the student development in the context of gaining the knowledge and mastering the skills needed for the concrete specialty; Should not be based on the assessment of one person only; Should have clear rules which include the particular case of missing the lectures by the students such as sickness or other reasons; Should provide the guarantee that assessment procedures are carried out in compliance with the procedures defined by the university; Should consider the possibility to be rechecked by the administration to ensure the correctness of the procedure [1; pp.17]. As we have mentioned several times above the objective of the presented article is to reveal the weak points in the assessment carried out in higher education system in our country and to highlight the compliance with the criterion the assessment procedure should be based on. More precisely we aim to learn to what extent does the assessment process coincide with every above given aspect included in the assessment standards. Involvement in international TEMPUS projects such as Promoting Internationalization and Comparability of Quality Assurance in Higher Education (PICQA) and Master in Higher Education Management: Developing Leaders for Managing Educational Transformation helped us to the great extent to gain some experience as far as the quality assessment and development of learning courses concerns. Cooperation with experts in the field of education in the frames of the projects, wonderful possibility to share the experience with European counterparts gave us some basis to understand the phenomenon of quality and assessment and the requirements towards these issues so that we are able to have a thorough understanding of the acceptable norms as well as can realistically speak about the strong and weak points in our system, be able to notice and detect the gaps we observe or come across in practice. One of the most important drawbacks in the assessment in Georgian reality is linked to sustainability of the process. As presented above sustainability is one of the most important aspects that should characterize assessment since it contributes to the effectives and completeness of the process to the greatest level. As it turned out, during the expertise of the assessment system at some Georgian universities, the process of student assessment fails in terms of sustainability and wholeness. In this regard the availability of such a document, which could give the clear picture of when and based on which principles the student was assessed, must be ensured. There is not any reliable document that could include every important detail of the student assessment so that it could show how continues the process of the assessment is. The register or any relevant document used for keeping the records of student assessment must enable the teachers/professors have the complete/detailed picture of every single mark and component. In other words, the register includes marks/grades that give no idea based on which principle they had been given to or what competence does every single mark aim to measure [6; pp.4]. In accordance with the registration rules all grade records must necessarily include the names of all teachers/professors involved in teaching of the concrete course. The detailed study of the grade records revealed that this requirement is not always met appropriately what makes it complicated to define the reliability of the records of the final assessment. Very often, in the process of implementation of the teaching/learning course which is carried out within the lecture+group work+lab work format, the lectures are conducted by one professor whereas group and lab. work are led by various lecturers within different groups. As the investigation results show this approach often leads to application of different strategies of assessment by the different lecturers. It is absolutely unacceptable to exercise various types of assessment strategies within different groups as well as one single group. One, unified assessment system must be elaborated by the team who are involved in the course implementation process. In this regard a very close cooperation among the lecturers is highly recommended when working on the strategy of assessment so that it is possible to follow clear, transparent and flexible rules smoothly and effectively by all lecturers as well as give clear picture to students which can work as the basis for trust and reliability [6; pp.4-5]. One of the top requirements of the effective assessment is the measurability. In other words the assessment must be measurable so that it enables the lecturer to measure the achievement of the student accurately. In addition to this the student should be also able to measure the own achievement and be provided with some clear background based on which he/she can define the own strengths and weaknesses easily and be sure about the fairness of the system. This kind of
assessment gives a real picture to the student so that she/he acknowledges the gap she/he has still to fill to achieve the high quality of performance. Every single learning outcome the students must develop within the particular course must be easily measured including competences and skills they have to acquire. Unfortunately a big volume of the materials investigated did not prove the application of the standards of measurability as neither the lecturer not the student is able to define the level of the achievement as accurately as they should be able to do. Consequently the data in the records do not coincide with the content. In other words dependence on this type of system does not give the reliable picture as far as some students with not so perfect performance might get better assessment than those who do much better during the course. In either case some student with similar achievements might be given different assessment feedback. This problem needs to be addressed immediately and more appropriate assessment system that will be used as a useful and easy tool to measure the competences must be introduced [6; pp. 5]. One of the important weaknesses of the assessment system applied in higher education is the incompliance between the learning outcomes and the assessment strategy described in the syllabuses. Learning outcomes and assessment should be closely interconnected since the effective assessment must be targeted at measuring learning outcomes defined in the course syllabus. As it was observed during the study of the syllabuses very often learning outcomes could not be measured by the assessment system presented in the same document. For example if the course learning outcome is to teach students stylistic devises like metaphor, metonymy, simile ect.; the achievement of the student can not be assessed/measured through the general statement such as the student gets 5 points if she/he has a precise knowledge of the material foreseen in the frames of the programme, makes minor mistakes, is actively involved in all activities ect.; Moreover, the strategy is applied for every single learning course independently from the field of study when the assessment strategy chosen by the course author should correspond to the learning outcome designed by the course. This reality could be explained by the fact that the assessment became more the tool for the course designers to make it acceptable and attractive as far as he accreditation concerns and less student-oriented. This turns out to be the tool of the control mechanism for accreditation while for the students it is often difficult to acknowledge what she/he gets any score for and what the above mentioned absolute knowledge can mean. According to one of the key statements in Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area Student assessment procedures are expected to: Have clear regulations covering student absence, illness and other mitigating circumstances. In accordance with the statement the assessment system must be flexible enough to provide the students with possibility to fill the gap in terms of the assessment if they have any excuse absences. Assessment system in our reality does not follow the above given statement since it does not have any clear regulation based on which the students absences, illness and other serious problems could be considered. The students as well as the lecturers would feel more comfortable if the assessments system allows to treat any special cases on a fair and transparent basis [1; pp.17]. In conclusion it is worth mentioning once again that the experience gained through international projects, collaboration with European educators, problems experienced during the practical implementation of teaching/learning courses, interviews with the students and other lecturers and detailed study of the existing materials gave us the opportunity and a reliable basis to draw the above presented conclusions that mainly deal with the weak points in our assessment system that make obstacles in realization of the student-oriented course acceptable with its quality and result focus. Existing problems should be addressed by the educators; the solution to those issues require to put more efforts from all parties involved in the education process as well as close cooperation and active involvement in the elaboration of the regulation that could fill the gaps existing in the assessment system. References: [1] European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education. ENQA report on Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area//Helsinki, Finland, 2009; [2] Bloxham S. Boyd P. Developing Effective Assessment in Higher Education. A practical guide. New York, USA, 2007; [3] TEMPUS 511035; Promoting Internationalization and Comparability of Quality Assurance in Higher Education (PICQA);
[4] National Center of Education Quality Development. Education Quality Assurance Handbook. 2011. (http://eqe.ge/uploads/accreditation/handbookgeo-finalised_last.pdf); [5] Turmanidze. L. Report on the Activities Carried by the Quality Assurance Service of Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University. 2009; [6] Turmanidze L. Report on the Activities Carried by the Quality Assurance Service of Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University. 2010.