Quality Promotion Office
Strategic Implementation –Quality and Strategy
Quality assurance and improvement measures in DCU are based on legal requirements as laid down in the University Act 1997 and are aimed at promoting best practice, while the Strategic Processes as laid down in the Strategic Plan 2006-2008 Leadership through Foresight and its predecessor Leading Change define DCU's strategic intent, core activities and values.
As such quality-related and strategy-related processes are different in scope and intent, but have to be aligned in order to enable the university to "facilitate timely change as opportunities, needs and priorities arise" (EUA Institutional Report).
The 2004 EUA Institutional Report recognises the need for such an alignment and goes on to state that "quality should be pivotal to the strategic planning process".
In particular, the EUA Report, in its Section on Strategic Planning and Quality Review, points out the following: The link between the restructured Faculties and quality related processes. This has been taken into consideration by including the Faculties in the cycle of reviews planned for 2008-2012, and by involving the Dean of Faculty in all School and Research Centre reviews. The introduction of Theme Leaders and their integration with the Faculty structures. This is also put into practice by including the Themes in the cycle of reviews planned for 2008-2012.
Vertical and horizontal communications at DCU. This has been made an integral part of the Strategic Plan Leadership through Foresight in the Internal Communications strategy and will form part of any future quality review, and will be reviewed as a university-wide issue in 2009-2010 (see below).
Identifying university-wide issues for review. This has been integrated in the 2008-2012 cycle of reviews in which university wide issues like Postgraduate Experience, Community Relations, Internal Communication, Physical Environment and Decision Making Processes will be reviewed.
Attention to other quality assurance and quality monitoring processes . This will be dealt with in a survey of all quality related mechanisms in DCU, beginning in autumn 2006.
The EUA report emphasises elsewhere (in the Observation on the Quality Review section) the importance of "the university-wide use of results" and the importance for Senior Management to have "an overview of the QRP outcomes and prioritise accordingly, in order to enable the university to learn collectively from the review cycle and draw lessons", in other words the importance of feeding the results of quality reviews into strategic planning processes.
This is facilitated by production and publication of reports bringing together results from reviews all around the campus paired with recommendations for actions by the Quality Promotion Committee. The first report on Common Themes in School Reviews 2002-2005 was completed in December 2005 (accessible at http://www.dcu.ie/qpu/qpc_reports.shtml ), the second report on Common Themes in Unit Reviews 2002-2006 was completed in September 2006.
The new planning process takes into account the Quality Reviews that have taken place already the quality process ties into the new 3 year planning timeline as far as practicable along with other elements such as faculty plans to continue this development the following measures have been taken:
- Monthly coordination meeting between the Quality Promotions unit and Strategic Planning office
- Coordination of quality improvement cycle and follow-through structures into three-year phases, in line with the new strategic planning timeline of three years
- Coordination of quality improvement initiatives with the implementation of the strategic plan
- Coordination of strategic planning with results from quality review processes
