Shannon Johnston

This case study presents an approach to professional learning for educators preparing to teach in a new building dedicated to flexible, collaborative, technology-enhanced learning and teaching. The approach was designed to expose teaching staff to spaces and pedagogies in active learning that they could then bring to their students’ learning. The CHAT acronym for our pedagogical model – Collaborative, Hands-on and high-tech, Authentic and active, and Team-based – framed the active learning focuses, and a continuous professional learning framework developed a sustainable model for accommodating staff needs and capabilities from a variety of starting points.

Quality assurance (QA) has long been applied in the corporate sector to ensure stakeholder satisfaction, compare standards with those of other organizations and raise standards in the face of competition. Applying rigorous QA and accreditation to educational processes and outcomes, particularly in higher education, is a more recent phenomenon. This chapter examines these issues in regard to conventional university education.