Overview
The manual developed for providing a report for faculty programme reviews was developed by the Library Quality Assurance Department and reviewed by the CPUT Quality Assurance Department. It was presented to a meeting of the Deans and accepted by the Deans as the formal document to be submitted by the library for review purposes.
a) About the visits
There are two types of reviews: external reviews such as professional body, or national reviews and accreditation visits. External reviews vary according to professional body requirements.
With an external review the academic programme of a specific academic department is evaluated. The department usually invites 2 South African and 2 international reviewers, usually staff of another South African or an international university with a similar academic department or academic programme, and a person from the specific profession.
When an academic department is already accredited with the specific professional organisation, this organisation comes every second year, for example, to evaluate the academic department to assess if the academic programme still complies to their requirements and criteria. This is called an accreditation visit. The academic department can also invite the organisation to pay them an accreditation visit. (UP Library Services: 2008)
b) Dates for the accreditation review
The schedule of review dates is approved by Senate and published on the website. The QA librarian will distribute the schedule to the faculty and branch librarians respectively. Generally, the librarian’s report needs to be given to the respective department and Quality Management Department (QMD) to form part of the department’s self evaluation. This report needs to be with the department 8 weeks in advance of the scheduled dates. The report will form part of the department’s evidence but will not necessarily be included in the bound documentation going to the audit panel
c) Compiling the report
For each review the librarian will complete 2 reports. The first report is completed before the review and uses the template in Appendix A. The second report is completed after the visit and uses the template in Appendix B.
The first report will contain two types of information: qualitative (perceived) data and quantitative (statistical) data. The qualitative data and report will be provided by the faculty librarian responsible for the department while the statistical data will be provided by the Library Quality Assurance Department. The second report will contain qualitative data gathered pertaining to the visit itself.