Tag Archives: English language programs

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Getting Serious About Quality

“A high quality English learning experience.” “High quality English instruction.” “High quality courses.” “Quality English lessons.” “The highest quality English programs in the area.”  

Defining Quality
Whether explicitly stated in our materials or not, we all want to offer quality, but it’s an elusive concept. The dictionary gives two definitions:

Definition 1: degree of excellence; how good or bad something is

Most likely when programs make a claim for their ‘high quality,’ they have something like this in mind. Unfortunately, ‘excellence,’ ‘good,’ and ‘bad’ don’t bring us any closer to a definition of quality, since they in turn need to be defined.

Definition 2: the extent to which something is fit for purpose

In other words, it is good quality if it does what it is supposed to do. This is unsatisfying if your program wants to market itself as standing out from the crowd. Some combination of the two, such as ‘we are ideally set up to do what we do, and we do it excellently’ gets us closer, but is still just as easy a claim to make as ‘we are high quality.’

If your program wants to avoid using the word ‘quality’ as more than marketing copy, you ought to substantiate the claim. (In fact you should do this even if you don’t explicitly use the word quality.) You not only need to satisfy potential students and other stakeholders of your quality; you also need to define it for yourself.  You need to determine what constitutes quality at your program as a benchmark against which to measure your program’s performance.

Elements of Program Quality
There are four bases on which you might define and claim quality for your program.

  • Quality of inputs. Inputs include teachers, program staff, the curriculum, the textbooks, and educational technology. For example, you might emphasize the credentials, experience, or personalities of your teachers; your highly researched and trialed curriculum; or your state-of-the art classrooms and digital learning opportunities.
  • Quality of the experience. You might emphasize your modern, comfortable facility, your carefully vetted and monitored homestay families, or your exciting social and cultural activities.
  • Quality of outcomes. While the inputs and the experience may make the process of learning at your program positive and comfortable, students are there to make progress in their English. Quality of outcomes may include increased test scores, successful achievement of measurable outcomes based on reliable and valid assessments, and job placements or college acceptances that depend on English attainment.
  • External recognition of quality. If student completion of your program is accepted by universities as an indication of English proficiency for admission programs, you have an external acknowledgment of your program’s quality. Some programs mention their accredited status as a mark of quality, or collect and publish testimonials.

Evidence for any of these claims can support the ‘we do it excellently’ and the ‘fit for purpose’ definitions of quality, but a convincing picture of program quality will need to be based on a combination of all four. A program may have knowledgeable and stimulating teachers (input), but students will not be satisfied if they are sitting in a poorly lit, unventilated classroom (experience). Accreditation involves meeting a large number of program-wide standards (fit for purpose), but has limited ability to communicate excellence above and beyond other programs, hundreds of which are also accredited.

Measuring Quality
A program that is serious about quality and about substantiating its quality claims should have quality assurance measures in place. Quality assurance means not only systematically collecting information; it also means reviewing it, sharing it, and using it to make improvements. Many programs are effective at collecting information, but few seem have consistent procedures in place to make use of it to improve quality.

Most measures of quality address inputs. Only relatively recently have measures of outcomes become more prominent, as a result of calls for greater accountability in education. The last two items in the table below are outcome measures.

MeasureQuality TypeQuestion to Ask
Class observationsInputs/ExperienceAre there plentiful affordances for learning in the classroom, and are students making use of them?
Course syllabi  InputsAre syllabi consistent with the curricular goals and objectives?
Course or teacher evaluation forms   InputsAre students delighted with their classroom experience and learning?
Student surveys  Inputs/Experience/ OutcomesWhat common themes indicate what your program is doing well or poorly?
Student needs analysis   InputsHow closely aligned with students’ expressed needs are your courses, skills, and language knowledge?
ComplaintsInputs/Experience/ OutcomesWhat do students express dissatisfaction about?
Suggestion box Inputs/ExperienceWhat are students asking for that you are not currently providing?
Teacher and staff retention  InputsIs your workplace attractive enough to maintain continuity in a faculty and staff that have a stake in your program’s quality?
Teacher feedback  Inputs/ExperienceWhat can you learn from your teachers about the student experience?
Accreditation feedbackExternal recognitionHow many of the accreditation requirements are you meeting and not meeting, and in which areas?
Student achievement  Outcomes (direct measure)Are valid and reliable measures of student attainment of your program’s learning outcomes being used to determine the level of student success?
Job placement/College acceptances (if applicable)Outcomes (Indirect measure)What percentage of your students are meeting English language standards for their academic or career goals?

Using a mix of these measures, you can develop a quality dashboard to benchmark your current quality performance and set goals for improvement. Provided the measures yield positive information, you can use the information to substantiate your quality claims and strengthen your sales messaging.

Not a bad strategy in an always-competitive field.

For Schools

Who owns the syllabus?

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Image by Darby Browning from Pixabay

A syllabus is a document that sets out a plan for how a teacher will turn the curriculum into a course. It’s one thing that tends to set university-based English language programs apart from private language schools. The latter tend to have short sessions or rolling intake systems that can mean students arriving in and leaving the class on a regular basis, as often as once a week. Schools with this type of system tend to follow a school-wide plan for what will be taught and assessed, in many cases based on the units of a textbook, and there is no place there for a teacher-made syllabus. 

Many university-based programs have inherited the syllabus tradition, which is part of a broader tradition of faculty ownership of teaching. That is, the teacher is assigned a semester-length course and is responsible for significant elements of its design and delivery. The typical syllabus is headed by the teacher’s name and contact information, and details such as location and schedule of the class and the teacher’s office hours. Information about the course tends to come later. The foregrounding of the teacher on the syllabus symbolizes the centrality of and ownership by the teacher. 

This is changing. Institutions have become more prescriptive about the layout and content of syllabi, and many provide a template for faculty to fill in. Heading the new style of syllabus is the institution’s name and logo, representing a brand consciousness that asserts the institution over the individual teacher. Additionally, the requirement to adhere to accreditation standards and institutional attempts to standardize course information and policies – such as academic honesty, attendance, and grading – mean that more syllabus information than ever is supplied by the institution and the document is less and less owned by the individual teacher. 

This makes the syllabus in some ways a contested area of school life, one in which the freedom of the teacher may be pitted against the requirements of the institution. Although it may not lead to openly expressed disagreement, there may be some concerns among faculty over this corporatization of the syllabus. On the other hand, having a template that looks professional and requires less ‘from scratch’ work is appealing to many faculty. 

I think it’s important to retain faculty-specific elements of the syllabus in university-governed programs. Yes, course goals and outcomes, and even some assessments, should be standard across course sections to ensure fairness to students. But one goal can be reached by many routes, and teachers – master’s qualified, experienced – should retain a degree of professional decision-making and judgment about which route speaks best to their own strengths and to the needs of the students in front of them. As in most things, it’s a question of balance.

Other news

Three organizational approaches to great student service

Over many years I’ve found that people who work in English language programs, whether teachers or  staff, are extremely kind, generous with their time and attention, and committed to their students. You’d think in an environment with people like that, students would always be well served. But in some cases the organization is set up in such a way that good student service is impeded. Here are three examples of organization-level problems and a suggested approach to addressing each one. 

  1. In one English language program, first-day check-in was conducted by the admissions team. They had it down to a fine art. Enter the lobby, present your I-20 and passport, check that you’ve paid your bill, show evidence of your health insurance, good to go, come back tomorrow for placement testing. It was highly efficient, and although the staff were friendly, this was hardly the welcome students should have been receiving after traveling thousands of miles and spending significant money for their program. 

    At this program, there was a siloed culture in which each team did its own thing. It was clear that students could be much better served if all staff, and faculty too, were involved in that first-day process. So, starting by inviting faculty to participate in welcoming the students that first day, the other teams – student activities and the academic staff team – were brought in. This resulted in a comprehensive first-day experience for students, starting with a warm welcome and conversation with faculty. Once the possibilities became clear, the academic and student services staff worked with the admissions team to create a process in which students could get a lot done – IT setup, activities sign-up, electives selection, program changes – in a ‘one-stop-shop’ approach that left students feeling welcomed and accepted into their new program. 

    Lesson: if your teams are working separately on serving students, break down the walls between departments and find ways to collaborate. You’ll find staff and faculty all pulling in the same direction and you’ll be serving students better. 

  2. Going back years, the summer term had been divided into ‘first half’ and ‘second half.’ This made it possible for teachers to teach just one half of the summer (which was an optional semester to teach in) and take the other half off. What’s more, the schedule had been adapted so that summer classes took place only in the mornings. The thinking seemed to be that the fall and spring were the ‘real’ semesters and the summer was just an optional, additional semester. 

    This may have been true for teachers, but not for students, many of whom wanted to continue their studies as normal over the summer and were inconvenienced by the mid-term change of teachers and the option to take only one 6-week elective in each half of the semester instead of two 12-week electives for the whole semester. 

    The arrangement seemed to suit faculty well, but had not been designed with students in mind. Again, there was no intention on the part of any individual to serve students poorly, but that was the effect of this arrangements. 

    Lesson: in decision-making around curriculum, schedules, and anything else that directly affects students, the first people to consider are the students. Always ask, ‘how does this benefit our students?’ In most cases, other considerations are secondary. Put students first. 

  3. In the final example, individual teachers worked with a staff member to plan and deliver specialized short programs. In some cases the staff member and the teacher had very different ideas about the role of each in the planning and delivery. One teacher viewed the staff member as ‘support’ – a back-office function to get students to the classroom where the learning happened. The staff member saw her role as integral to the students’ education and claimed more than spreadsheets and transportation arrangements. Disagreements got in the way of a team effort to give students the best possible service. 

    No matter the individual job – whether classroom teacher, student services staff, admissions personnel, and so on – everyone works for an organization that has the purpose of educating students. A narrow view of education is the ‘delivery to the classroom’ model – staff get students to the classroom where the ‘real learning’ takes place. But an English language program is a place where learning can take place at every stage and in every interaction.

    Lesson: As a part of the institutional goal to educate, see all employees as educators, and get them to see themselves in that light too. In particular, faculty and staff should see themselves as being in a partnership, with differentiated roles, to help students learn at every opportunity. 

    I hope you can see how impediments like the ones I’ve described can get in the way of good student service, no matter how kind the individuals in the program are. Look for examples of these organizational blockages in your own program and work to fix them. You’ll make a big difference to your students’ experience.