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Reflecting on the Composition of a Communities of Practice in Quality Assurance for a Sustained Quality Culture at a CODeL Institution
Abstract
The University of South Africa (UNISA) has sought to enhance stakeholder participation in Quality Assurance (QA) processes to fulfill its legislated quality promotion and capacity development mandate. To address one of the recommendations from the Council on Higher Education (CHE) institutional audit, a Community of Practice in Quality Assurance (CoP on QA) was composed because of the CoP’s potential for enabling authentic quality engagements and genuine dialogue.
Given that UNISA is the largest Comprehensive Open Distance Education and e-Learning (CODeL) university in Africa, the quality department employs a devolved model of QA. The quality department relies on the Academic Quality Heads in the colleges, the Quality Champions in the support departments and Quality Committees in the Regions who made up the CoP on QA because they are critical in cultivating a quality culture. To understand the benefit or lack thereof derived by the quality community from three CoP activities, the quality department conducted a reflective exercise on their experiences.
The paper’s purpose is to reflect on the composition of the CoP in cultivating a sustained quality culture in a CODeL institution. Reflexive praxis enabled intentional and critical analysis of personal, collective and institutional experiences. Surveys were completed, literature on CoPs consulted and this was complemented by Gibbs’ reflective model. The paper argues for the benefits of using CoPs as dialogical platforms to enhance QA processes with the potential of enabling a sustained quality culture.
The paper concludes by acknowledging that ignoring the quality community in QA is detrimental to a sustained quality culture at the CODeL institution.
PCF11 Sub-Theme: Sustaining Communities of Learning and Practice in Innovative Open Education
Paper ID: 8610
Country
South Africa
Region
Africa
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Date
2025-09
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Publisher
Commonwealth of Learning (COL)