Shape up instead of messing up
Traffic lights help cross a busy road. At TUAS, traffic lights, or quality, mean that everyone follows the rules and goals we have jointly agreed on. Once the direction is clear, things do not have to be repeated over and over again. We cross the street quickly and go in the same direction.
Text and photo: Anne Lehikoinen
In the photo: Anna Mäkipää, Executive Director of Student Union TUO
At TUAS, quality work means not only looking ahead but also striving at excellent results in the areas defined by the strategy.
The audit of TUAS, carried out by the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre in the beginning of next year, finds out how TUAS’ operations are implemented in practice. It will also highlight the possible targets for improvement.
At TUAS, we have a quality team which comprises quality experts from the faculties and student representatives. This fall, the team has urged the people of TUAS to document their activities and promote good practices. The Chairperson of the quality team is Senior Lecturer Antonella Storti.
TUAS will be audited on 19–21 January 2016.
Read Student Union TUO's Anna Mäkipää's thoughts about auditing and quality work:
Students play a big part in developing our operations
The quality team of TUAS evaluates, for example, the functionality of different procedures. In terms of students, all internal development work obviously matters in order to make studying fluent and to recognise development needs in time.
“When our operations are high-quality, there is less messing about. It is important to interfere right away, if something needs to be fixed", says Anna Mäkipää sharply. She represents TUO in the quality team.
M.Sc. Anna Mäkipää works as the Executive Director of TUO and she has gained experience in education policy both within the Union of Students in Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences - SAMOK and the National Union of University Students in Finland. Mäkipää has worked with auditing tasks also before.
“I was a member of the auditing group in the re-audit of the University of Tampere, so I'm used to following quality-related matters. In my opinion the role of students is very important, because they possess the best knowledge on studying. In order to be able to improve the operations, the implementation of the operations have to be regularly and carefully monitored", Anna points out.
She considers quality in studies to be, among other things, about “students knowing what they’re doing or where they can get information". Students must also be able to recognise the influencing channels when they think that something needs to be changed in terms of the studies.
“Last year, the organisational change implemented at TUAS was justified. Of course the operations have to be constantly observed and all alarm limits have to be recognised in time.
It’s vital that students get similar treatment everywhere", Anna emphasises. She also reminds that if audits did not exist, there probably wouldn't be enough time for practical quality control because of all the everyday hustle.
“Students are prepared and enthusiastic; we have many active people to change the world”, Anna Mäkipää promises. “We want to be involved in changing the big bad quality work to a great friend and a member of the community”, she adds.
TUAS will be audited on 19–21 January 2016.
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