Quality procedures

 

COMPOSITION

The Director of the Department responsible for the Department's Quality Assurance. A Department Quality Commission (CQD) is established in each department, which is appointed by the Director of the Department and ensures the connection between the PQA and peripheral structures (Department, CdS, CPDS) and provides support and advices about AQ of teaching, research and third mission.

The DFA has decided to set up the CQD in its widest expected composition, i.e. 10 members. In particular, considering the small number of CdS at the DFA and their interrelated cultural profiles, the DFA has also decided that the members of the GGAQ of the two CdS (L30 and LM17), with the exclusion of the Presidents of the CdS themselves, are also members of the CQD in order to promote synergies and minimize both conflicts of skills and duplication of work between the three committees.
 

MODUS OPERANDI

The CQD meets regularly about every month and, in any case, when needed. The agenda of the meetings is available to public on the DFA website and the minutes are published on the dedicated page. During the meetings the CQD:

• Discusses about issues to be addressed to improve quality and related actions;
• Checks the status of the routine periodic tasks (eg drafting documents) and identifies the related actions to be performed;
• Appoints one or more CQD members as responsible for the actions reported in the previous two points, according to criteria of convenience (some actions aimed at stimulating teachers can be unsuitable for assigment to student members) and fair sharing of the workload (note that the composition with 10 members allows to share the tasks between subgroups of the CQD itself and to perform multiple tasks in parallel in less time);
• Examines the progress of the actions decided at previous meetings;
• Evaluates the results of the previously decided actions which have been accomplished;
• Identifies and assigns additional (follow-up) tasks for those actions that have not been completed or that have not achieved the desired results. 

 

The typical life cycle of an action is shown in the following block diagram:
 

GOALS AND SCHEDULED ACTIONS FOR QUALITY ASSURANCE

In accordance with the list of tasks assigned to the CQD by the "Quality Assurance System of the University of Catania", the planned actions can be divided into two major groups:

1. Routine actions to be performed periodically (such as support to the GGAQ, the Presidents, the Department to ensure the quality of the different documents that each body is called to draw up);
2. Specific quality improvement actions related to specifically selected aspects.
    

The short-term time schedule of the most urgent actions, reported in the 2019-2021 Department's Three-Year Strategic Plan, is illustrated in the following Gantt chart, where the blue items are related to the measurable goals (milestones) that the CQD aims to achieve in the next three years.