3.4 Change and improve through analysis and strategy development

In this section you enter into the crucial phase of the PDCA cycle: you will learn how to transform your assessment and evaluation results into change and improvement activities for your organisation. You will become familiar with methods for professional analysis of factors contributing to quality and you will learn how to organise change and move towards improvement.

 

Several examples in Section 3.3 have demonstrated how close assessment and evaluation are to development of new ideas on change. When discussing assessment results the solution is quite frequently immediately at hand, particularly when it comes to correcting errors and overcoming poor quality.

Applying professional methods to analyse your assessment results should help you to go beyond ad hoc solutions and to design a coherent strategy for improving quality of the whole organisation and its core process – teaching and learning – and to set out a detailed improvement plan that corresponds to the criteria for planning as shown for this stage of the PDCA cycle in Section 3.1.

 

Box 22. Proposals of the EQAVET recommendation

For the last stage of the PDCA cycle the indicative descriptors in Annex I of the EQAVET recommendation suggest that:

  1. learners’ feedback with teachers’ feedback is used to inform further actions;
  2. procedures on feedback and review are part of a strategic learning process in the organisation;
  3. appropriate action plans are put in place.