An Investigation into the Practice and Challenges of Quality of Education Process: The case of Wachemo University

Abstract

The research assess the practice and challenges of quality of teaching and learning process in Wachemo university, with a sample size of 369 students and 253 teachers from all the faculties using proportionate to size stratified simple random sampling ; two top university management were included purposively as respondents. Two types of questionnaires, which measures students’ satisfaction and teachers practice, were administered. Moreover, interview guides were also used to get information from university top management. Descriptive analysis revealed that teachers practice specially on use of students’ centered approach varied methods of teaching, formal paper and pencil planning for classes and use of continuous assessment with all necessary immediate feed backing were found to be improved . Descriptive analysis on supervision and support also revealed that by the time of data collection it was found that university has no policy documents; but there were a very considerable effort to adapt HERQA document to the university context, it was also found that there was no quality assurance units, mechanisms and systems. Furthermore, it was found that there were efforts to motivate and sustain staffs but much more work is needed. Among the challenges for quality teaching and learning process, weak commitment and engagement on the side of students, low staff management relationship, management reluctance for the betterment of teaching and learning process and lack of immediate response from management were found to be dominant. In conclusion from the results, even though; there were considerable efforts the result has shown some gaps for improvement.