A collection of useful resources for college members

Welcome!

Find out what QAA has on offer for our college members. Click through this selection of resources designed to help you deliver a high-quality student experience.

Use and adapt these resources to save you time when developing your quality processes, enhancing support for your students and planning staff development activities.

I’ve always been able to rely on QAA guidance and resources as my 'first port of call' when developing new policies, procedures and practices knowing they have been developed in consultation with the sector with the aim of enhancing the quality of the student experience.’

Bill Hunt, Director of Higher Education
Activate Learning

Student engagement

Engaging students in the quality of their learning can be challenging for colleges especially when HE numbers are relatively small and the student body is diverse, following a wide range of courses and varied modes of study.

The Student Engagement chapter of our HE Toolkit is a great starting point. It covers student representation and student engagement in their learning.

Additionally, there are some great Collaborative Enhancement Projects which explore student engagement.

Our ‘Responding to student voice: Principles of practice cards’ can be used with students and staff to boost the ways you gather and respond to student feedback.

Set up your Membership Resources account with your college email address - it’s open to all staff and students!

The cards can be edited so they’re tailored to your college and are part of our Responding to student voice collection. 

See also positive practices for supporting student representation and engagement on committees within our set of student engagement resources.

Going beyond the baseline

Click to hear more about Beyond the Baseline to understand how the resource can help you!

Beyond the Baseline is a resource map which demonstrates how QAA Membership resources and activities can be used to meet and exceed the OfS regulatory requirements as you enhance your student learning, teaching and assessment.

This tool can support:

Development or review of policies and strategies
Programme design, approval and review
Preparation for external quality review
Partnership discussions
Overall enhancement of your HE provision.

‘Instead of having to start all elements of the regulation and quality assurance of HE from scratch I utilise the wide range of QAA resources to support my role. The HE Toolkit. has long been a valuable resource which has become an integral part of my planning process and more recently the newly created Beyond the Baseline Resource to streamline my tasks, ensuring that I'm focusing on the essential elements of managing the HE provision. This has significantly boosted my productivity and allowed me to allocate more time to other critical aspects of my responsibilities’.

Jane Nickisson, Assistant Principal
The Trafford College Group

We have used some of the QAA resources in the 'Beyond the Baseline' publication to develop our approach to supporting students’ mental well-being, and have used the 'Taxonomy for Digital Learning' to establish a common institutional understanding and approach to the design and delivery of our online provision, which has been extremely successful and is growing year on year.

Bill Hunt, Director of Higher Education
Activate Learning

Work based learning and apprenticeships

Higher Education in Apprenticeships
Our new toolkit can support you in the development and delivery of apprenticeships, providing information on designing programmes, supporting apprentice journeys and quality assurance. 

You can use the toolkit as:

a training tool to enhance your own practice
an aid for your team staff development
a reference point for reflection and discussion with colleagues.

Competence based education
The latest episode in our popular Podcast series introduces a discussion of how the core concepts of competence-based education compare with those of more traditional educational models.

Tune in now!

Evidencing value

Often the elements we value most about higher education do not have ready metrics that can be used to describe and evaluate them, these are known as intangible assets.

Our Evidencing Value: Beyond the Metrics Toolkit provides a 3-step approach enabling you to identify, understand and evidence the value of your 'intangible assets' in terms of how they contribute to student success.

There are a wide range of practical materials in this collection include mapping tools, case studies and workshop templates.

Support all students to achieve their best outcomes

We like these resources to support retention, achievement and progression:

Popular supporting Successful transitions materials including icebreaker ideas to help build a sense of belonging for students

A case study on ‘Monitoring and enhancing retention among underrepresented groups’

Our student guide to unpacking the assessment process and a reflective toolkit for staff to support the development of inclusive assessment design.

Top tip: Don’t forget to revisit these resources when you're working on your Access and Participation Plans!

Training opportunities

Our professional development programme offers you the opportunity to engage as part of an online cohort to learn effective practices from QAA specialists and peers drawn from across the sector.

Included in full membership are a series of three regular courses designed for colleagues at different stages in their quality career:

Step into Quality
Introduction to Quality
Quality in Practice: Quality Management.

Resources from our programmes are useful to take forward for your own staff development activities too!

College-based HE Policy and Practice Network

This Network is dedicated to our college members offering insights on the UK HE policies that affect college quality as well as providing a forum for sharing practice and experience.

Access the network resources to catch up on policy development, effective practices and top tips from your peers:

Evaluating Access and Participation Plans (APPs)
Narrowing gaps in degree attainment
Teaching observations
Micro-credentials
Creating a HE culture & ethos.

All staff and students from your college have unlimited access to guidance and practical toolkits via the QAA Membership Resources Area - share this link so they can sign up!