Institutional Enhancement Directorate having embarked upon a herculean task of supervising and identifying grey areas within both academic and administrative wings is getting into groove. Its director, Dr Tesfaye Habtemariam, is optimistic to bring tangible results by next year with required resources at his disposal; he also talked about attainments and future course of action.
At the outset, Dr Tesfaye said apart from quality coordinators recently he has inducted five more experts to look into core areas such as education & training, administrative process, continuous assessment, data management and curriculum. Primarily, we are looking into quality aspect of the academics but in future we will be overseeing quality of research and community service processes as well for which more experts would be on board next year.
On modality, he said our experts visit campuses with the check-list to know whether educational process is as planned; they enter classroom, talk to teachers and students; if problems noticed they communicate it to the concerned persons along with tips to improve. While keeping tabs on things, if omission still persists, we again remind them to rectify discrepancies.
On identified grey areas, he said, glaring issues come to fore at Chamo library, text-books were lying in stores instead of shelf; some staff had no aptitude towards their jobs while few were below standard and these lacunae had been conveyed to Campus Dean to act upon.
He adds it has also been noticed across campuses that students were not involved in decision-making process and when former had issues it became difficult to resolve them. In a meeting we along with concerned individuals arrived at a consensus to address issues, remedies like tutorials for female students, continuous assessment and intervention in common course along with auditing individual problems in the department were suggested, he explained.
Admitting candidly, he said, as of now there is nothing to brag about; on classroom assessment, he said we find issue regularly with expatriate and local staff; however, we are tackling them. Much is to be done on continuous assessment to have good impact on students’ performance.
His directorate has also asked for customizing SMIS in a way that data posting must be done in a chronological manner, it must deny access to those who found skipping previous tests results, it will expose the culprits and assessment issues will be properly dealt with.
He agreed that this is most sensitive and taxing job, but by next year we will be doing activities in a structured manner. As of now, we are here for checking quality; after supervision, we give on-the-spot oral feedback followed by written as well.
On role his directorate plays in ensuring implementation of recommendations, he said, we follow whether they are on it or not but at times respective departments don’t have support to enhance quality, I feel, if we assist them in doing so, they can do it well. While, exceptional cases are being taken to the Deans Forum for arbitration.
Furthermore, he said, at the moment, we are in a nascent stage but with adequate professionals soon we will expand our work domain; issues of usage of Amharic instead of English in the class, which is the medium of instruction in university, will also be addressed, he signed off.
(Corporate Communication Directorate)