QUALITY POLICIES CONFORMED WITH ABET IN A SPANISH

ENGINEERING SCHOOL

Edmundo Tovar

Language and Computer Science Systems and Software Engineering Department, Technical University of Madrid, Spain

Keywords: Accreditation, Quality policies, Engineering Higher Education.

Abstract: The European Higher Education Area is an example of diversity of political systems, higher education

systems, socio-cultural and educational traditions, languages, aspirations and expectations. In the light of

this diversity and variety, technical universities set its face to develop their internal quality assurance

systems according to the European standards and the guidelines, focusing more on what should be done than

how they should be achieved, but also to different factors and sources. This presentation explains the

definition of quality policies in a Spanish Engineering school, including engineering accreditation,

programs, funding programs or improvement plans.

1 QUALITY IN THE EUROPEAN

HIGHER EDUCATION

The issue of quality assurance has risen very high on

the Bologna agenda and is seen now as one of the

key instruments to promote the attractiveness of

European higher education. It was made clear that

when defining common criteria and methodologies

in the European Higher Education is necessary to

take into account the diversity of the various systems

and traditions that will go into the construction of a

comparable framework.

Harmonization should be the result of the

conjunction of these traditions and should, under no

circumstances, mean their reduction to a common

pattern. For the implementation of an effective

culture of quality, it is essential that governments,

Higher Education Institutions (HEI), quality

agencies, teachers and students all participate, in

view of the expectation that this process will benefit

not only all agents involved but also society at large.

The Berlin Communiqué - while recognizing the

role of HEIs in promoting quality invites the Quality

Assurance (QA) and Higher Education communities

to develop an agreed set of standards, procedures

and guidelines on quality assurance (Roselló, 2004).

Institutions and agencies are achieved on a basis

of greater transparency in accreditation processes.

To that end it is essential to promote a peer

review process among agencies. But this proposal

had a risk. The Institutional Evaluation Programme

has given Europe a solid experience in transnational

evaluation, evaluating close to 120 universities in 35

different countries. This ten-year experience,

combined with the outcomes of the Quality Culture

project, points to the fact that it is impossible to

reach an agreement on quality standards when

dealing with a diversity of institutions across a

whole continent. On the other side, evaluation

approaches -based on standards, quantitative

methods, sets of criteria or checklists will not

improve quality meaningfully and may not even

control it significantly because they will not capture

the complexity of the educational enterprise.

So, the Graz Declaration claims that "the

universities are responsible for developing internal

quality culture" and the Berlin Communiqué says

that "the primary responsibility for quality assurance

in higher education lies with the institution itself and

this provides the basis for the real accountability of

the academic system within the national quality

network." As discussed at the Graz Convention

(May 2003), among the policy goals for an

appropriate European QA dimension are to achieve

greater compatibility while managing diversity of

QA procedures, to achieve trust and to preserve and

extend institutional autonomy while meeting the

demands for accountability. Autonomy is a

precondition for a capacity to respond to change.

Thus, university autonomy requires that each

Tovar E.

QUALITY POLICIES CONFORMED WITH ABET IN A SPANISH ENGINEERING SCHOOL.

DOI: 10.5220/0006811400010001

In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2009), pages 24-28

ISBN: 978-989-8111-82-1

institution decides on its standards in the context of

its mission and goals (Wilson, 2004).

Increasing autonomy of HEI is the primary

responsibility for quality. It is essential that the

development of a European QA dimension

accompanies and extends institutional autonomy in

order to ensure that QA is not merely window-

dressing and a compliance exercise. Quality

assurance systems need to be flexible and embrace

this diversity in order to ensure that higher education

serves effectively society (Erichsen, 2004).

2 QUALITY POLICY IN A

HIGHER EDUCATION

INSTITUTION

The statement of Quality Policy in HEI documents

the authority for the implementation of a quality

management system in the form signed by the dean

or director in charge of the institution implementing

the quality management system. It must express the

intentions of the institution concerning the quality of

the academic offer and the rest of services and

products it supplies. It is a way to guarantee the

coherence of the processes, products and services

covered by the quality management system.

According to ISO (ISO, 2005) with respect to the

capabilities enclosed in the quality policy for which

the organization is seeking certification, top

management should ensure that:

 It is appropriate to the purpose of the

organization

 It includes a commitment to comply with

requirements and improvement the

effectiveness of the quality management

system

 It is understood and communicated a within the

organization and

 It is reviewed for continuing suitability

 It provides a framework for establishing and

reviewing quality objectives

Quality Management System, authorized and

conformance by the existence of a Quality system,

defines the policies, procedures, methods and

standards for the management of the HEI. The

policies for developing, implementing and

maintaining the quality management system, first

element of this Quality System, must be designed to

ensure that stakeholders’ requirements are met.

This paper proposes to identify these policies in

European Engineering Higher Education, and its

application in a Spanish Engineering School.

The statement of quality policy in HEI

documents the authority for the implementation of a

quality management system in the form signed by

the dean or director in charge of the institution

implementing the quality management system. It

must express the intentions of the institution

concerning the quality of the academic offer and the

rest of services and products it supplies. It is a way

to guarantee the coherence of the processes,

products and services covered by the quality

management system.

Which are the stakeholders that provide sources

for the desired quality deployment of the institution?

3 A PROCESS TO DEFINE

EUROPEAN ENGINEERING

HIGHER EDUCATION’S

QUALITY POLICY

Herein it is proposed a three-phase process to

identify the Quality Policy (Tovar, 2009). These are

the following:

 Phase I. Which are the stakeholders that

provide sources for the desired quality

deployment of the institution? In the case of

European Engineering HEI and according to

our experience, we have selected the following

stakeholders, as providers of policies: Strategic

plans of the institution, Guidelines from

National Quality Agencies, and funding

programs for the institutions.

 Phase II. Elicitation of policies from the sources

identified

 Phase III. Specification of a consistent Quality

Policy. A Quality Policy is specified trying to

gather all the policies extracted from the

different sources or stakeholders. This is a sub

process to be defined by each HEI that will

require the prioritization of each set of policies

and an effort of synthesis to express in an only

statement maybe several redundant policies.

4 SOURCES FOR QUALITY

POLICY

Strategic Plans. Leadership systems (Miller, 2007)

are the systems within an organization that provide-

direction and support. The leadership system directs

an institution trough mission, vision, guiding

principles, strategic goals and organizational

structure.

Many European universities combine these

elements of leadership system and Strategic

Planning from a perspective of continuous

improvement. This process scarcely differs from

those elaborated in the corporate setting in terms of

who needs to be involved and in the relative

emphasis on financial issues. The strategic planning

process is usually generated from a self-assessment

process or a more detailed evaluation using the

corresponding national or European standards for

quality in education. A tool that is widely used to

stimulate the reflection in preparation for the

strategic plan is SWOT (standing for strengths,

weaknesses, threats and then on opportunities). It

provides useful information building a common

perspective about the current state of the institution

to consider the future. Finally, once the politics and

strategies goals have been defined, the organization

moves in the desired direction thanks to the actions

plans defined.

Guidelines of European Networks of Quality

Agencies. HIE themselves have sought external

benchmarks to sanction and justify their conclusions

(Marcellán, 2005). Those responsible for higher

education policy in Europe have pressed

determinedly for the establishment of entities and

organizations that will facilitate assessment

initiatives for their improvement. In a further step

forward, the establishment of networks of assessing

entities was sponsored by the European Commission

in exercise of its competences in respect of

promoting the European dimension and

incorporating added value to Member States'

initiatives. The supreme such entity is the ENQA

(ENQA’s General Assembly confirmed on 4

November 2004 the change of the former European

Network into the European Association) which was

recognized by the conference of ministers at Berlin

in September 2003 as the preferred interlocutor in

matters of quality assurance in the European

Convergence process. The Ministers of the Bologna

Process signatory states invited ENQA through its

members, to develop an agreed set of standards,

procedures and guidelines on quality assurance and

to explore ways of ensuring an adequate peer review

system for quality assurance and/or accreditation

agencies or bodies. The standards and guidelines

were designed to be applicable to all HEI and quality

assurance agencies in Europe, irrespective of their

structure, function and size, and the national system

in which they are located. It will be for the

institutions and agencies themselves, cooperating

within their individual contexts, to decide the

procedural consequences of adopting the standards

contained in this report (ENQA, 2004). (Table 1)

Table 1: European standards and guidelines for internal

quality assurance within higher education institutions.

1.1 Policy and procedures for quality

assurance: Institutions should have a policy and

associated

procedures for the assurance of the quality

and standards of their programmes and awards

1.2 Approval, monitoring and periodic review

of programmes and awards: Institutions should

have formal mechanisms for the approval,

periodic review and monitoring of their

programmes and awards

1.3 Assessment of students: Students should be

assessed using published criteria, regulations

and procedures which are consistently applied

1.4 Quality assurance of teaching staff:

Institutions should have ways of satisfying

themselves that staff involved with the teaching

of students are qualified and competent to do so

1.5 Learning resources and student support:

Institutions should ensure that the resources

available for the support of student learning are

adequate and appropriate for each programme

offered

1.6 Information systems: Institutions should

ensure that they collect, analyse and use

relevant information for the effective

management of their programmes of study and

other activities

1.7 Public information: Institutions should

regularly publish up to date, impartial and

objective information, both quantitative and

qualitative, about the programmes and awards

they are offering

Further, these guidelines reflect the statement of

Ministers in the Berlin communiqué that 'consistent

with the principle of institutional autonomy, the

primary responsibility for quality assurance in

higher education lies with each institution itself and

this provides the basis for real accountability of the

academic system within the national quality

framework'. In these standards and guidelines,

therefore, an appropriate balance has been sought

between the creation and development of internal

quality cultures, and the role which external quality

assurance procedures may play (Puirséil, 2004). In

this way, the purpose of these standards and

guidelines is to provide a source of assistance and

guidance to HEIs in developing their own culture of

quality assurance, and to contribute to a common

frame of reference for the provision of higher

education and the assurance of quality in the EHEA.

The Thematic Network in Engineering Education

has worked developing a tool fully compatible with

ENQA requirements and, in general the European

trends toward internal Quality Assurance of

Programmes (M. Gola, 2007). The tool developed is

named: “Tool for Quality Assurance And

Assessment of Engineering Education”. The Q.A.

FRAMEWORK is designed to be maintained on an

ongoing basis rather than as a periodic reporting

structure. For this reason it is recommended that the

ongoing maintenance could be controlled and

delivered by internal Faculty;

Taking into account basic Quality Assurance

requirements and European guidelines, the

Framework has been wrapped around Learning

Outcomes and/or Academic Competences, which are

now the most interesting development under way at

the international level. During design of the Q.A.

FRAMEWORK, this line of thought has been

deployed into the following set of hierarchical core

requisites.

 The Programme must be clearly designed

around external Requisites and related

Competencies which are in agreement with the

needs of the employers and the labour market;

such relations should be present already at the

design phase, and not only (as it often happens)

at the moment of the Stage or of the final

project:

 The Programme must be clearly deployed with

up-to-date Learning Outcomes, which are in

agreement (content, amount, level) with the

target competencies.

 The Programme must expose the students to an

appropriate learning environment, with

appropriate and up-to-date equipment.

 The Programme appropriately certifies that

Learning Outcomes have been reached, the

exams have a certifying value

The Q.A. FRAMEWORK captures the critical

information which is required by stakeholders such

as employers, the labour market, students,

educational policy makers, educational

establishments. It collects all the details which are

strictly necessary.

In the absence of any current prescribed model,

this Framework can be adopted as a Programme

design tool as a checklist for its evaluation and as a

guideline for the implementation of internal Quality

Assurance.

Meeting all three of these needs calls for an

approach based on permanent monitoring: the

degree program must be asked to produce and

maintain the Q.A. FRAMEWORK that contains all

the qualitative and quantitative parameters needed to

arrive at an informed judgment about the degree

program's aims, methods and the learning

environment provided to the student.

While this Q.A. FRAMEWORK is necessarily a

public document, it can be flanked by a periodic

“Selfevaluation Report” prepared exclusively for

parties inside and outside the institution who are

involved in any form of evaluation and

accreditation. This “Report” would describe quality

factors and the actions involved in control,

highlighting the degree program's strengths and

weaknesses, corrective measures, review activities

and follow-up, and their effects over time.

The Q.A. FRAMEWORK is thus the foundation

for all future evaluation/accreditation processes. It

must satisfy minimum requirements for content and

form so that degree programs of the same or similar

type offered by different institutions can be readily

compared. (figure 1)

Funds. Concerns about money and accountability in

public services do exist in several European

countries. These concerns have led to the rise of

previous evaluative activities and a posteriori

evaluation which seeks to discover how far goals

have been met. The HEI in many countries in this

context have moved towards expenditure-driven as

opposed to demand-related budgeting. This shift has

promoted performance related funding and

encouraged Performance Indicators or Quality

Indicators which permit finer targeting of resources

(Cave 1994). Despite the existence of this fact,

systems of HEI vary in many ways including the

degree of autonomy in institutions and individual

academics. Furthermore within any country different

policies might be pursued for different sectors of

Higher Education.

5 THE CASE OF A SPANISH

ENGINEERING SCHOOL

We show the application of the previous process to

obtain the Quality Policy of an Engineering School

of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in the

context of the development of its Quality Assurance

Figure 1: The Quality Assurance Framework Matrix (M. Gola, 2007).

System. In ahead, we comment the results each

phase of the process.

The definition of the quality policy in the

Computer Engineering School of the Universidad

Politécnica de Madrid has required the selection of

the following stakeholders of the general providers

of policies: Strategic plans of the institution,

Guidelines from National Quality Agencies, and

funding programs for the institutions.

Figure 2 shows these results.

SOURCES FOR THE COMPUTER ENGINEERING SCHOOL’S

QUALITY POLICY (UPM)

SELF

EVALUATION

IMPROVEMENT

PLAN

School

University

Agreement-Program

Framework

QUALIY INSTITUTIONAL

PROGRAM

University

EXTERNAL

ENQA: European

Guidelines

Others:

ABET,

EFQM…

Spanish Quality

Agency

AGREEMENT-PROGRAM School-University

School

STRATEGIES

ACTION LINES

QUALITY POLICY

School

MISSION

VISION

School

Strategic

Goals

Figure 2: Quality Policy sources for a Spanish engineering

school in a public university.

Strategic Plans. Strategic plans must distinguish

those ones referred to the school and the university

to which belongs. Although the Universidad

Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) has currently an

Institutional Quality Program (PIC), it has no

strategic plan yet.

The UPM, (www.upm.es), approved in the year

2005 a quality program named “Programa

Institucional de Calidad” (PIC, Institutional Quality

Program) (UPM, 2005), with the following key

objective: to measure the quality and to foster and to

assist the initiatives of continuous improvement in

the different Schools, departments and units of the

institution.

The Mission and Vision Statements of the

Computer Engineering School were approved last

October (www.fi.upm.es). These are the basis too

for the quality policy. As it says concerning to the

accreditation: “… the academic offer shall be

conformed to the European guidelines accreditation

and others internationally recognized in the

engineering sector…”

By this reason to establish a comprehensive

quality policy and strategy, the criteria for quality

certification and accreditation of different

organizations in the USA and Europe have been

taken into consideration, particularly ABET,

Accreditation Board for Engineering and

Technology (ABET, 2007), and Baldrige (Baldrige,

2007) in the USA, and EFQM (European

Foundation for Quality Management, 2007) in

Europe. Table 2 shows criteria for ABET

Accreditation:

Table 2: ABET accreditation criteria.

Students: Admissions & Graduation

Requirements, Evaluating Student Performance,

Transfer Credit, Advising & Career Guidance

Program Educational Objectives:

Consistency with Mission, Constituency

Involvement, Achievement of Objectives

Table 2: ABET accreditation criteria (cont.).

Program Outcomes: List the outcomes that

have been established for the program, Describe

how the program outcomes encompass and

relate to the outcome requirements of Criterion

3. State how each of the outcomes lead to the

achievement of the Criterion 2 objectives.

Describe the process used to achieve each of the

program outcomes.

4 Continuous improvement

Curriculum: Evidence that the minimum

credit hours and distribution are met.

Information on capstone or other integrated

Experiences

6 Faculty competencies and size

Facilities: Describe program classrooms,

laboratory, facilities & equipment, computing

equipment, and information infrastructure.

Budget and Financial Resources.

Support: Program Industrial Advisory

Committee

Program Criteria: Describe how the

program satisfies any applicable

The preliminary conclusion is that, in general

terms, the policy and strategy elements defined in

the above mentioned criteria are quite similar to

those covered by other sources: ENQA and ANECA

guidelines, and the Institutional Quality Program,

PIC, of the UPM. On the other hand, the

certification criteria usually provide with more

detailed quality requirements, since they focus on

“how the organization does” kind of questions to

evaluate the performance of the organizations. For

this reason, the certification or award criteria are

very useful as a guidance to identify the key

processes in the organizations.

Guidelines of Quality Agencies. In Spain, the

Agency ANECA (Agencia Nacional de Evaluación

de Calidad y Acreditación: Nacional Agency for

Quality Evaluation and Accreditation), member of

ENQA, has adapted the ENQA guidelines to the

Spanish context and has published a document

(ANECA, 2007) with a set of guidelines for the

systems of internal quality guarantee within HEI.

These ones should become in part of the quality

policy of any institution conformed to these

guidelines.

Funds. The PIC protocol establishes the need of a

Program Agreement to be subscribed by the

Chancellor and the directors of every HE institution.

The aim of this program is to align the objectives of

the Schools that form the University to a unique

UPM policy and strategy, and to provide - the

stakeholders with reliable information on the

fulfilment of the agreed objectives.

With the above scope, the University has defined

a “Framework of Program Agreement” (UPM, 2005)

that will assure a common focus of improvement

objectives, goals and indicators, with the flexibility

required to adapt every Program Agreement to the

particular improvement needs of the different

Schools. The results of the Program Agreements will

allow - the Schools to get an additional funding over

the fix budget.

The structure of the Framework of Program

Agreement is based on these three action lines:

• Line 1: Budgetary distribution of the operating

and overhead expenses

• Line 2: Assistance to the implementation of

improvements plans

• Line 3: Continuous improvement processes at

the Schools

In table 3 are represented some of the most

significant objectives of - line 2, assistance to the

implementation of improvements plans, since they

will be used, along with the line 3 objectives, in

order to compare the strategic objectives of the

different sources taken into consideration in this

paper.

Table 3: Line 2 Program Agreement Framework

objectives by areas.

Area Objectives

Educational

programs

Planning

•

Increment the number of new

students

• Educational profile taken into

account the social and

stakeholders needs

• Curriculum and educational

programs review

• Implementation of mechanisms

to track and – steer the

development of the plan

Teaching,

learning and

Evaluation

processes

•

Improve and update the

contents of the courses

• Update and improve of the

teaching-learning methods

Support to and

communication

with the

students

•

Facilitate the integration of new

students

• Design and implement tutorial

plans

• Funding assistance

• Students placement and

scholarships

Table 3: Line 2 Program Agreement Framework

objectives by areas (cont.).

Resources and

infrastructure

• Planning, evaluation and review

of the library resources

• Update the classrooms and labs

to the current and future needs

• Update and improve the ICT

resources to the current and

future needs

External

relations

• Foster the external presence

• Strength the relationships with

alumni

• Post graduate courses

• Programs for knowledge and

technology transfer

School

Structure and

Organization

• Faculty and Staff needs focus

• Improve the Human Resources

policies and management

Faculty and

Staff training

and support

• Promote and support the

professional development

• Encourage the participation in

educational, research and

innovation activities

• Acknowledgement of the

excellence in educational and

research activities

Information

management

• Put in place systems to capture,

analyze and disseminate the

information

Finally, we broach the specification of well-written

policies, conformed to properties as precision, non

ambiguity, relevance or non redundant. Because we

start from statements elicited from several sources

we had to make several actions to assure not only

the previous properties mentioned but also other

ones as consequence of the gathering process:

coherence, integrity and coverage of the policies

selected

These were the actions taken:

 Matching of the terminology used in each

source, in order to assure.

 Distinguishing the priority of the different

sources. In Spanish context Audit’s policies are

mandatory and they must be embedded in the

final policy declaration. ANECA will verify

the Internal Quality Assurance System of the

School according to their guidelines.

 Defining quality policies with partial

contributions of policies from all the sources

matched by common areas. An example of how

a policy is defined through the contribution of

several policies from different sources can be

seen in table 4.

 Validating the coverage of the quality policies

defined with respect to all the strategic goals

expressed in the sources considered.

Table 4: Example of elaboration of a Policy from multiple

sources.

Example of final

policy

Source’s Policy Source

The school shall

control the

existence,

efficiency and

effectiveness of

mechanisms to

assure the access,

management, and

training of its

academic staff

according to the

functions assigned

as well as the

acknowledgement

of its merits.

1.3 The University

must implement

mechanisms that

assure the access,

management and

training of Faculty

and Staff should

be done with the

necessary

guarantees to

fulfill their duties.

AUDIT

3.10 Improvement

of the scientifist

acknowledge of

academic staff in

its knowledge area

incrementing the

number of

publications

UPM

Program

Agreement

L4. Promotion of

the academic staff

in teaching quality

projects in the

UPM

PIC

L3. Linking

training plans to

the needs of

services delivering

PIC

… … …

6 CONCLUSIONS

The issue of QA has risen as one of the key

instruments to promote the attractiveness of

European higher education Area. The Berlin

Communiqué recognized the role of HEIs in

promoting quality to develop an agreed set of

standards, procedures and guidelines on quality

assurance. HEI’s autonomy is, by this reason, a

precondition for a capacity to respond to the change.

Thus, university autonomy requires that each

institution decides on its standards and in the

definition of the quality policies in the context of

several sources. This paper has presented the process

followed by the Computer Engineering School of the

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid to elaborate the

Quality Policy of the School, according to the

different elements, strategic elements, national

quality agency and funds program of the HEI,

concerned to this school This practical case is an

example of how an European Engineering school

develops its autonomy.

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BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

Edmundo Tovar, Computer Engineering educator,

has a Ph. D. (1994) and a Bachelor’s degree (1986)

in Computer Engineering from the Universidad

Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). He is Certified

Software Development Professional (CSDP) from

the IEEE Computer Society and he has worked for

five years in private companies as a knowledge

engineer and in Public Administration as a Software

Engineer. Expert evaluator in Accreditation

processes with the Spanish Agency for Quality

Assessment and Accreditation, ANECA, he has been

involved as a researcher in software quality

management tasks in international projects since

1988, managing several innovative projects in

education in the context of the European Higher

Education Area. He is Associate Dean for Quality

and Strategic Planning in the Computing School of

the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Leader of a

Innovation Group in Education in the Universidad

Politécnica de Madrid is author of more 40 papers in

Engineering Education, and member of several

Program Committees in Congresses of this area, he

is cochair for Europe of Frontiers Education

Conference (FIE) and member of IEEE RITA

Editorial Committee. He is IEEE Senior Member,

and, as at-large member of the Administrative

Committee of the IEEE Education Society.