Talking the Quality Talk, Walking the Quality Walk: Developing an Online Quality Assurance Training Program

Quality Assurance (QA) aims to ensure and enhance educational quality, promote accountability, and foster sustainable improvement and is considered a crucial element for higher education systems in a world of constant change, increased competitiveness, technological innovation, and rising costs. In the last several years, quality assurance in Turkish higher education has experienced substantial improvements. The current developments reflect ongoing efforts in Turkish higher education to improve quality assurance processes, comply with international standards, and guarantee the consistency of academic offerings and institutional standards. The development and training of human resources are of paramount importance in creating sustainable QA efforts. Thus, the Quality Coordinatorship of Anadolu University developed a unique online training entitled "Institutional Self-Evaluation Training Programme" to equip the University staff with the required knowledge and skills to conduct internal evaluation in academic programs. Following a cross-sectional research design, and making use of learning analytics and satisfaction survey, this research investigated the learning patterns and satisfaction of the participants involved in this course. The high learning resources access and activity completion rates in this course suggest that there was a significant interest in the course considering it was only a recommended course. In addition, high levels of satisfaction, which was supported by the qualitative findings, show that the online training was endorsed by the participants as a viable training activity. [This paper was published in the INTE-ISTEC-ITEC-ITICAM-IQC proceedings, 2023, pp. 760-772).]