A QUALITY FRAMEWORK TO MEASURE COURSE OBJECTIVES

An ongoing goal in higher education is to provide quality education programs and to produce high quality graduates. While much of the attention to quality matters is focussed on outputs, there is little that addresses the preliminary or input side of the educational program. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that it is feasible to construct a course profile based on standard inputs in the form of the behavioral objectives that are stated for the subjects comprising the course. The application of the course profile will be found in supplementing the understanding of quality frameworks in the assessment of degree programs, thereby becoming a useful tool for benchmarking courses and comparing across department and institution boundaries.