Business Rules Driven Automated Quality Assurance Governance System for Higher Education

Abstract

Although higher education institutes have paid serious attention to quality assurance, implementation issues have been reported frequently. Since the existing information systems do not adequately support automatic verification, manual verification of quality assurance compliances has become a challenge. Therefore, this study first analysed the prevailing higher education quality assurance context to identify the prevailing issues. Secondly, Quality Assurance Governance System integrated with a quality assurance rule manipulation mechanism was designed based on the business rules concept to address the identified issues. Thirdly, the key modules of the proposed Quality Assurance Governance System were developed as a proof-of-concept. Finally, the proposed quality assurance rules manipulation mechanism and modules of the Quality Assurance Governance System were evaluated. The study found that one of the main issues in the existing systems is the lack of integration among various modules and a rule manipulation mechanism. Therefore, the study concludes that quality assurance requirements could be better captured as rules using the proposed rule templates, while rule manipulations and compliance could be verified in real-time through the proposed Quality Assurance Governance System. Nevertheless, the results of the evaluation suggest that rigid rule implementations may make the system inflexible and create stakeholder resistance. Thus, this can be mitigated by implementing the proposed rule enforcement levels.