Keeping UTAR's quality assurance at its best

From left: Jayalechumi, Loh, Masfidayanti, Waheedullah, Manu, Prof Ewe, Nurdalila, Dr Nenita, Asmaa and Dr Chong

UTAR welcomed a group of delegates from Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) on 6 March 2019 at UTAR Sungai Long Campus. The official visit saw six MQA delegates, both local and international, visiting UTAR to gain insight on how UTAR maintains its quality assurance and standards.

The delegates from MQA were its Assistant Directors Asmaa Suid and Masfidayanti Mokhtar, Senior Executive Accreditation of Division of Finance Accreditation Agency Nurdalila Mohd Mohtar, Senior Qualification Analyst of Tonga National Qualifications and Accreditation Board Kisione Wesley Manu, Quality Assurance and Accreditation Coordinator of Kardan University Waheedullah Afghan, Coordinator of Accreditation and Operations Assistant of Philippine Association of Colleges and Universities Commission on Accreditation Dr Nenita Belinia Nagarit. Welcoming them were UTAR Vice President for Internationalisation and Academic Development Prof Ir Dr Ewe Hong Tat, Dean of Academic Quality Assurance Dr Chong Shyue Chuan, Director of Division of Quality Assurance (DQA) Loh Siaw Yien and DQA Assistant Manager Jayalechumi Gunasegaran.

The delegates were welcomed with an introduction video of UTAR before the room’s attention was switched to Dr Chong. In his presentation, he explained the role, procedures and standards that UTAR applied in its internal quality assurance policy to maintain the quality, integrity and systematic quality control of the university, which was led by the DQA.

“DQA is responsible for the coordination of the activities designed for quality assurance and enhancement of the academic programmes. To achieve the educational quality, the division focuses on compliance to standards set by the University Senate, Ministry of Education (MOE), MQA and professional bodies. Other than that, the division also monitors the implementation of proposed actions arising from external examiners, industry advisors, external review panel reports and MQA reports,” explained Dr Chong.

UTAR’s IQA Policy outlines the significant features of the IQA system, describing how quality assurance is planned and implemented to provide quality education for national advancement in line with the University’s vision and mission. The IQA System covers a wide spectrum of activities, focusing especially on all the areas as described in the Code of Practice for Institutional Audit (COPIA) and the Code of Practice for Programme Accreditation (COPPA) as well as quality assurance documents issued by the MQA.

UTAR’s IQA system also includes University Quality Assurance and Audit Committee (UQAAC) chaired by the Dean of Academic Quality Assurance. The Committee is responsible to ensure the university adheres to internal quality system requirements and external statutory bodies requirements, formulate policies or initiatives on quality assurance and enhancement, keep the university informed of national development in quality management and best practices for quality improvement, and raise awareness of quality policies and procedures among departments and faculties/institutes/academic centres through briefing sessions and publications.

The quality assurance process in UTAR is holistic as it includes the feedback and responses from the students and alumni.

“We have a channel for students to give feedback or appeal if they find out that the marking result of their examination is not up to standard. There is an official appealing system, where we will appoint the second examiner to carry out the marking process again. The dean will then decide whether the marking has been fairly done or not. All of these will be reported to the senates,” said Prof Ewe.

Other than the examination system, UTAR also takes students’ view into account in improving the quality of teaching and facility through feedback available in their student portal every trimester.