On 4 February FASoS organised a meeting attended by 45 members of its academic and support staff. The meeting was aimed at informing them about and discussing the implementation process and ongoing activities of several FASoS programmes. Associate Dean for Education, Dr Jo Wachelder, opened the meeting with a presentation recapitulating how FASoS went from preparing for audits in 2012 to the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of improvements in 2015 and beyond.
In the current academic year 2014/15 our concerted efforts have been devoted to implementing the actions announced in the improvement plans, as well as to monitoring and evaluating the various adjustments. Both this process and our findings are reported in so-called ‘stand van zaken-notities’ (state-of-affairs reports), which will be submitted to the audit panels later this year. The Media Culture report is scheduled to be submitted in the spring of 2015,while the other reports will follow in September. The audit panels will base their re-assessments on these reports (and, possibly, on other documents upon request). These panels will check not only whether specific actions have been implemented, but also if they resulted in the intended effects. Thus it will be verified whether the final qualifications are met in the final work of students who benefited from the implemented improvements. Several announced improvements, however, will be implemented after submission of the state-of-affairs reports. The audit panels will forward their findings to the Dutch accreditation organisation (NVAO), which will decide whether the programmes have improved sufficiently for granting them definite accreditation.
In 2013, the audit panels agreed that several FASoS programmes needed to improve both the preparatory track for final work and the final work grading procedure. In their view, too many theses failed to meet the required academic standards and, as a result, too many students graduated without really having satisfied all final qualifications. For this reason, the improvement plans predominantly focused on amending the thesis preparation trajectories, enhancing grading procedures and, last but not least, strengthening and improving grading practices. Along this line, Jo Wachelder’s presentation also included the following specific advice for thesis supervisors: be very explicit about the mutual expectations supervisor and student have of each other (tell them to ‘make good use of their supervisor’); have students annotate (in APA) all drafts (to make sure that the final one is OK); have students summarise your advice in an email message after a meeting (to avoid miscommunication); take into account the WIRM (What I Really Mean: succinct abstract of your main argument/point); stick to deadlines on which both student and supervisor agreed.
Dean Rein de Wilde held short interviews with directors of the programmes involved, whereby the audience was provided ample room to ask questions. Directors of studies expressed their gratefulness for the support they received from academic and support staff, and they also claimed to be proud of the strong sense of ‘shared responsibility’ throughout the process. Thanks to this shared effort, all implementations have been and will be executed as scheduled. Representatives from all programmes felt confident that the many adjustments and all the extra work will pay off, even though the directors of studies voiced some concerns as well. Specifically they mentioned the issue of available and experienced staff to guide students during the thesis process and to grade theses. The Faculty Board encouraged all directors of studies to approach the board to discuss their concerns and to collaborate closely in formulating solutions.
