1Assuring Quality in IT Department in Middle East College

Assuring Quality in IT Department in Middle East College

Mazin Ali Abdullah Al-Maqrashi

68968

Sultan Qaboos University

2Assuring Quality in IT Department in Middle East College

Overview

This proposal is about ensuring quality in Middle East College which is one of an

important technologist college in Oman. I had taken my internship in this college particularly in

the IT department and my training benefits are good so far. In general, this proposal will focus

in the assessment of IT support department in cases of the quality of the services that provided.

The main goal of the research is to ensure quality of IT Department in Middle East College.

More focus will be for the quality of products and services that this department provides for

faculty members and students. The main objectives that will be focused in this research are to

develop personnel knowledge and skills by assessing improve the quality of products and

services in this department. The second objective is to improve the curriculum in this

department by assessing the whole content and products. The third objective of this research is

to provide qualitative environment for teaching and learning by ensuring the quality of material

and stuffs around the environment of IT Department.

Personnel

I will assess the personnel in IT department in MEC which will cover instructors,

students and staffs. I will assess the instructors from different directions including, the strategies

of teaching, attendance of the lectures on time and using technology in teaching. About the

students I will assess them by evaluate their levels of learning, grades, skills and innovations in

this institution. In case of assessing the staff of this department I will look through the quality of

services that they provide for students and instructors. Moreover, most of the students and

teachers have weaknesses in case of troubleshooting their computers and using some of the

software in their learning.

3Assuring Quality in IT Department in Middle East College

I will use a questionnaire or survey to assess students’ performers, knowledge, skills and

level of understanding. The following is a sample of the questionnaire that I will use to evaluate

students:

The sentence Agree Not Applicable Disagree

1 I satisfy of product and services in IT

Department

2 IT Department develops my knowledge

and skills.

3 IT Department helps me to improve my

performance and level of thinking.

4 IT Department has not covered my

interest and ambition.

On the other hand, I will assess the instructor by using interviews but I will mature their

ways of teaching, using technology in their learning and teaching, support students with different

resources for learning and the abilities to cover and manage the content of learning correctly.

These are some of the questions of the interview that I will make for instructors:

1- Did you think that IT Department helps you to develop your teaching strategies and

methods of teaching? How?

2- Is IT Department providing technologies and material that facilitate your way of teaching

and develop your teaching skills?

4Assuring Quality in IT Department in Middle East College

3- Did you encourage students for learning by motivate them through the technology and

recourses that you provide for them?

In addition, I will evaluate the faculty member and the administration of the IT

department by cover the area of their responsibility, the services that they provided and

improving the department quality. I will also use interview to evaluate this dimension as the

following:

1- What type of services that you provide in IT Department?

2- How the administrations help the department to improve?

3- What is the future plan to develop this department to have high quality products and

services?

Curriculum

In this department I will assess the curriculums which are including books, online text

and types of content that used to teach students. I will evaluate each type of curriculum: are

they meet students’ needs? Do those curriculums provide supportive recourses for students to

get more information and search about knowledge? Are they different type of content provide

for students (text, audio and visuals)? There are some limitations of some courses in the

department because of lack of some resources that support learning.

5Assuring Quality in IT Department in Middle East College

I will use an expert review to see and evaluate the qualitative of the curriculum in this

department and how much fit the student abilities and met their needs. However, I will

evaluate the supported recourses that will supply this courses and students in learning.

The following is an expert review that I will use to evaluate the curriculum, products and

recourses in IT Department:

sentence Weak Good Very good Excellent

Match between system and the real world

Consistency and standards

Flexibility and efficiency of use

Help and documentation

Aesthetic and minimalist design

Error prevention

Environment

The environment is Middle East college specially IT department. There are some

strengths and limitations in the environment in this department. This department provide

different services for example, LRTC, equipment for learning, different labs and IT support. In

case of the limitation of the environment of IT department there are some lacks of materials

which are facilitating learning and teaching. In addition, this department has some limitation in

IT support because there are many students and teachers have some problems on their computers

and as a result of that they will need a lot of support from IT technicians. There no workshop that

6Assuring Quality in IT Department in Middle East College

trains faculty staff and students to maintain their own laptops or fixing simple problem in the

department.

I will observe the environment of the department in the Middle East College and cover all

the branches that contained by using checklist observation sheet. In this dimension I will

evaluate the materials that department provide, the labs, the activities and creativity of the

department, new technology and other cases.

The following checklist which I will use it to evaluate the infrastructure of IT

environment:

Item Yes No Comments

1 LRTC is effective in the department.

2 Computer labs are working well.

3 The sitting of the labs are good.

4 IT support are had effective services.

The following checklist which I will use it to evaluate the IT environment:

Item Yes No Comments

1 The condition of the department is fine.

2 Different technologies provided in IT department.

3 The environment is motivating students for learning

7Assuring Quality in IT Department in Middle East College

Conclusion

All in all, this research are discussing some strong points in IT Department in MEC and

other limitations of this department and how to improve it in the future. I see that my plan had

evaluated and cover all the dimension of this department and that will help in ensuring quality in

an effective way. This research covered three main dimensions which are personnel; curriculum

and environment of this department and this are the strongest points in the research because the

main goal is to ensure the quality in IT Department and that’s why we should to cover all the

dimensions of IT demonist ions. Moreover, in this paper I had used effective assessment tools to

evaluate each diminution of the department and I think each tool fit the context that it used in.

However, there are some limitations that I should to fix in this paper which include personnel

satisfactions, curriculum of IT Department and more knowledge about the area of IT in MEC.

Recommendation

In the future I think there is some other area that I should to focus on in IT Department

because the collection of data should be in effective way to continue other steps in the research. I

need to improve the way of assessing the context of learning and choosing the suitable tool for

each area or context to ensure the quality of each dimension in the right position.

8Assuring Quality in IT Department in Middle East College

References

1- Joanne Fritz, About.com Guide (2011). How to Write Goals and Objectives for Your

Grant Proposal , Retrieved from website:

http://nonprofit.about.com/od/foundationfundinggrants/a/goalsobjectives.htm

2- Waikato, (2011). APA Referencing Guide (6th Edition) , Retrieved from website:

http://www.waikato.ac.nz/library/study/guides/apa.shtml

3- Department of education and Training (2007). Designing assessment tools for quality

outcomes in VET, Retrieved from website:

http://www.vetinfonet.det.wa.edu.au/progdev/docs/design_assessment_tools_2008.pdf

4- Aresearchguide, (2008). How to Write an A+ Research Paper, Retrieved from website:

http://www.aresearchguide.com/1steps.html

5- The QA Testing Best Practices Flow Diagram, (2009), Retrieved from website:

http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/infocntr/implement/qa-performtest.pdf

6- Mecit, Support Services at MECIT (2011). Retrieved from website:

http://www.mecit.edu.om/sDepartments/sDepartments.html

9Assuring Quality in IT Department in Middle East College

QA Diagram

1. Assuring quality in IT Department in

Middle East College

1.1 Personnel 2.1Curriculum 3.1Environment

Goa

l

Dimension Dimension

1.1.1 Develop personnel knowledge and skills by

assessing improve the quality of products and services in this

department.

2.1.1 Improve the curriculum in this department by assessing

the whole content and products.

3.1.1 Provide qualitative environment for teaching and

learning by ensuring the quality of material and stuffs around the environment of IT

Department

ObjectivesObjectives

1.1.1.1Interview

4.1.1.1Questionnaire

2.1.1.1Expert review

5.1.1.1Survey

3.1.1.1Checklist

6.1.1.1Checklist

Collect DataCollect Data

Assessment Tool Assessment Tool

2- Analyze Data

3- Present Data1.4 QA Diagram

4- Recommendations