3.3 Functionality and development of the quality system

HEI's self-assessment

Quality system supporting the enhancement of the core duties

Our common organisational management and quality system frame Plan-Do-Check-Learn&Develop-Communicate ensures the coverage of quality work through all core duties and the organisation. In addition, every core duty has its own specified steering elements, processes, indicators, feedback systems, and development forums to support the operations and development work aligned with strategic objectives set for the core duty.

Picture 24. Management and quality system in education
Picture 24. Management and quality system in education

Responsibilities in quality development are embedded in organisational roles, official bodies, and development groups to cover the whole organisation. Each of them has an agreed area of responsibility and development objectives. The main task is the continuous development of operations based on results, feedback, and foresight work. All staff members participate in development groups as part of their team, group, or area of responsibility as well as horizontal groups over the organisational structure. These groups contribute to the development of a joined-up quality culture.

Picture 25. Framework of official forums and bodies
Picture 25. Framework of official forums and bodies

The quality system produces information for the development of all core duties, and the indicators help draw attention to strategically salient matters. The utilisation of results and feedback in development across the organisation could be enhanced still to further strengthen the impact.

Organisational structure and forums supporting the sharing of good practices

Good practices are disseminated in groups, forums, and on the organisational level. The new organisation promotes sharing practices by setting people into groups with similar or crossing competences enabling them to share and develop the competences further. Other methods for sharing good practices are cross-organisational and role-based groups and forums, events like Pedacoffee (pedagogy) and TuTKII (RDI) as well as online platforms e.g., Develop and share your expertise. The sharing of knowledge is monitored in the personnel survey.

Participatory development work promotes the sharing of good practices as part of the process, e.g., in the education reform good practices were gathered across the organisation to form the new structure of the curricula. Another broadly applied concept is the digipeda mentor model with teacher colleagues guiding and supporting the development of digital competences.

Joint development and open quality culture

We actively include internal and external stakeholders in our development work. Our personnel survey from 2021 indicates that the whole staff is committed to high quality, developing their expertise and continuous development. Change management in dialogue has enhanced the participatory culture. Education reform, new organisation and team-based teaching promote collaboration and joint development.

One of our strengths is that students are heard. Students are actively involved in appropriate development groups and official bodies. The Student Union and student organisations have open dialogue with the management and they meet in official JOOP-meetings four times a year. They are consulted on important issues and interact informally on a weekly basis. There are multiple possibilities for all students to participate in development by giving feedback, which is discussed openly in various forums with students and stakeholders. There are still challenges in getting feedback and it requires continuous encouragement. Shared information platforms and virtual participatory working models for both staff and students enhance the openness and shared quality culture.

Our connections with businesses and organisations are strong. Company representatives and our alumni are involved in development at a strategic level, in advisory boards, development groups, as well as sharing their expertise in teaching or RDI activities. Our national and international networks contribute to our quality work through joint development and benchlearning. External stakeholders’ inclusion as a systematic part of a shared quality culture requires continued attention to retain the achieved level of activity. We are proactively creating new ways to include stakeholders in our quality work.

Agile and holistic development of the quality system

We develop our quality system proactively based on external and internal, current and future needs with the help of feedback, assessments, benchlearning and external input. We evaluate and fine-tune our quality work continuously at the practical level; thus, the development of the quality system is dynamic and agile. We implement major changes in projects with wider impact assessment. The effects of changes are monitored through surveys, development forums, and feedback. We can further improve the systematic monitoring of the effectiveness of quality work.

Haaga-Helia’s quality system has been assessed as part of the organisation-wide self-evaluation (2009, 2016, 2022). The effectiveness is assessed based on our current ability to support the strategy and objectives. We recognised both our strengths and development needs, which we documented into development plans. The overall assessments will continue more frequently and systematically to ensure the required support for achieving our strategic goals.

 

Strengths Enhancement areas
Listening to students and stakeholders, and their active involvement in development work, development groups and official bodies New organisation and education reform bringing new responsibilities and operational models, which are still evolving
Possibility for the staff to influence their own work as well as the development of Haaga-Helia, thus creating a dynamic organisational culture Monitoring the impact of development actions becoming even more systematic and more widely communicated
Quality system covering the whole organisation and its development based on strategy and needs from the organisation Continuous encouragement to develop continuous and open dialogue approach in feedback culture

Assessment of the audit team

The quality system produces extensive information about Haaga-Helia’s core duties

Haaga-Helia has built functioning procedures for reviewing the achievement of the strategy and of annual plans. Haaga-Helia uses the quality system to be able to identify its development needs and enhance its operations in line with the strategy. The audit team sees that Haaga-Helia has succeeded in creating an open and participatory quality culture for both staff and students. It has installed functioning procedures to evaluate all stages of the student’s studying cycle; from the orientation days to graduation and from health and sport services to the Work&Study model and related counselling guidance services. Haaga-Helia’s mission is to open doors to future careers. There is a strong connection with working life, which results for example from the flexibility of studies which makes it possible to study even with a full-time job. The teaching staff also emphasized the good collaboration with working life networks in the interviews. Haaga-Helia’s Work&Study programme is a great way to combine studies with working, but further improvement of the model is still needed as described in chapter 4.

There is room for improvement in the feedback system

Feedback plays a key role in the development and functionality of Haaga-Helia’s quality system. For example, feedback is part of the process ensuring that courses meet their requirements and ensuring that Haaga-Helia’s studies match the requirements of working life. Another example that came out in the interviews was that “we need better data quality in reporting systems, for example: course feedback reports do not separate students who completed the course or dropped out—therefore we also don’t know why they dropped out.” The interviewed teachers described the feedback from students as a valuable instrument for competence development. The audit group agrees with the view that feedback is actively utilized in operational development. As a consequence, its continuous improvement of feedback systems is very important.

The audit team encourages Haaga-Helia to enhance its feedback procedures especially concerning teaching and finding new ways to get students to give feedback more actively. Some of the interviewed students reported that sometimes their feedback concerning courses changed things and somethings they did not know what happened to their feedback. One way to motivate students to give more feedback on teaching could be to improve the feedback-on-feedback procedure so that students would feel the impact of the feedback given to teachers.  In addition, an allocated time to fill in the feedback forms at the end of the course could increase participation in the feedback process. 

Haaga-Helia’s operating culture supports the development of operations after major changes

Haaga-Helia’s participatory culture became obvious in the interviews. The audit team got an impression that both the staff and students feel that their opinions are heard and taken into account, and that their opinions and wishes had an impact. For example, the student organization members told the audit team that they had proposed ways to improve the possibilities for international students to find jobs in Finland and proposed more excursions in English. The student representatives told the audit team that both issues are currently being considered because of their initiative. The staff also gave Haaga-Helia mainly positive feedback in the interviews and workshops. The teachers described the situation in the following way: wishes are listened to and taken into consideration, opinions are heard and there is a high level of trust.

The personnel survey from 2021 indicates that the whole staff is committed to high quality development of their expertise and continuous improvement. The audit team had the clear impression that autonomy of work, open culture and team teaching is appreciated by the staff. 

Teachers seem to be quite independent when deciding what and how they teach. Nevertheless, the audit team recommends Haaga-Helia to make sure that this independence does not decrease the quality of teaching. There were signals on this also in the interviews, described as follows: “as the teachers can teach what they want, the quality of teaching is not necessarily equal.” The audit team received wishes concerning more contacts between colleagues and getting to know new and competent colleagues. Possibilities to meet with colleagues from other substance areas was mentioned in the interviews several times as well as sharing of good practices within and between campuses and teams. The interviewees also hoped for more time to settle into the new organization, for bringing the change procedure to a successful end and to improve change management. In this regard, Haaga-Helia still has work to be done. 

The new organization was established partly to increase openness and to prevent silos. The audit team considers that reaching these aims is still in progress and Haaga-Helia should put more effort especially in improving communication and cooperation between competence areas, responsibility areas, and campuses. However, a participatory operating culture creates good conditions for achieving these goals.