Quality assurance and safeguarding activities for the graduation process
The graduation projects are important for demonstrating that students have met the final attainment levels and are qualified to receive their diplomas.
Guidelines and a framework will be in place for this purpose. However, ensuring the quality of this process remains a challenging endeavor. In particular, ensuring the reliability of the grading. How can you ensure that the difference in grades is meaningful? Does the grade depend on who happened to be grading (inter-assessor reliability)?
Investigation, verification, and calibration activities within study programmes may help to explore and increase the reliability of these complex assessments. These activities can be initiated by programme management (from a quality assurance perspective), the Examination Board (from a safeguarding perspective), or both parties jointly. A programme committee can also play a role in this respect. Below, more information is provided about actions that can be taken.
Interesting sources elsewhere
* Most information is unfortunately only available in Dutch.
- Protocol Expert Group and Background Information. In 2014, the Expert Group Protocol was commissioned by the Netherlands Association of Universities of Applied Sciences to investigate the desirability and possibility of a joint protocol for the assessment of (core) essential assignments (in higher professional education). The results are presented in the report: "Beoordelen is mensenwerk. Bevindingen over de wenselijkheid en mogelijkheid van een gezamenlijk protocol voor het beoordelen van (kern)werkstukken Links to an external site.” The findings are primarily aimed at the higher professional education sector (hbo's). Nevertheless, they are also interesting for the Dutch academic world, because there are many similarities in the graduation process and the manner of assessment.
In addition to the protocol, a checklist was created to diagnose the extent to which the graduation programme of the study programme is in order and where there is still room for improvement. See for this: "Voorlopige handreiking ‘Methodisch implementeren van het Protocol Afstuderen Links to an external site." Versie 29 oktober 2015 Daan Andriessen, Mirjam Snel, Dominique Sluijsmans.
The questions from the checklist can be found in an English version <here >. Most of these questions are incorporated in the checklist as mentioned at the beginning of this page. - In the Protocol Verbeteren en verantwoorden van afstuderen in het hbo 2.0 Links to an external site, more background information on graduation (in higher professional education) is provided.