Page 15 - Accreditation Manual for Program Owner -300424

Timeline and Related Task for Accreditation

The preparation of a good PSAR is an iterative process. A preliminary PSAR is to be prepared within 2 months. Then,
various CQI initiatives to close the gaps (as well as to collect evidences) have to be carried out in order to produce
a final “Good PSAR”. Figure 3.1.2a shows a general flow of the main phase of the PSAR preparation while Figure 3.1.2b
elaborates more on the process as well as showing the approximate timeline.

3.1.3 Checking Phase

The checkers have to be appointed before the start of the checking phase.
These are a aspects to be considered for selection of the different types of checker which are (refer Table 3.1):
# Familiar with the Field of discipline (Field)
# Familiar with Accreditation requirements (Accr)
# Likelihood of Biasness (Bias)
# Financial implications (Cost)

Table 3.1: Pros and Cons of the different source of checkers

Checker source Description Field Accr Bias Cost
Department This is the most common approach. Someone senior in the 3 1 1 3
department will go through the whole PSAR to check for consistency
of the data as well as to recommend extra information that is
missing.
Faculty This approach is desirable as the expert from the same faculty 3 2 2 3
should be rather familiar with the programme and yet not bias.

University This approach uses experts from other faculties. This approach may 1 3 2 2
occur if a programme comes from a small faculty where everyone in
the faculty is already involved with the Programme. Another reason
for using this approach is that there are no experts on accreditation
from the faculty.
Outside university This approach is a being used for professional programme accreditation. 3 3 3 1
The outside from the university checker should be some experts who
is currently involved in the accreditation of similar type of programme.
Comments from this expert will be similar to another assessor from the
same professional body that is assigned to accreditate this programme.
However, this checker usually needs to pay.

Scale: 3: Excellent, 2: Good, 1: Bad. The values put in are the common for most programs. May not apply to some
programs.

The task for the checker involves preparation of “Part D: Self-Review Report”. Furthermore, they should check for
factual errors, missing information, data consistency and grammatical error.

3.2 PREPARATION OF THE FACULTY FOR THE PHYSICAL SITE

VISIT FOR THE PANEL OF ASSESSORS

For the purpose of the Panel Assessors site visit, the program owner is required to:
1. Confirm the date and schedule (refer to Appendix 3.3. for a typical schedule) of the visit with QMEC (One
week after submission of PSAR).
2. Once the date is confirmed by QMEC, the programme owner ca inform the whole faculty.
3. The programme owner to informed all the relevant staffs and ensure that they are available on that date
(leave are not allowed).
4. Based on the tentative schedule, contact the potential interviewees (Staff, student, alumni, employer) at
least 15 days before the actual visit following the category and criteria as shown in Table 3.2.

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