Meet calls for increased quality and understand accreditation expectations Author Linda Suskie is internationally recognized for her work in higher education assessment, and she is a former vice president of a major regional accreditor. In Five Dimensions of Quality: A Common Sense Guide to Accreditation and Accountability in Higher Education she provides a simple, straightforward model for understanding and meeting the calls for increased quality in higher education ever-present in today's culture. Whether your institution is seeking accreditation or not, the five dimensions she outlines will help you to identify ways to improve institutional quality and demonstrate that quality to constituents. For those wading through the accreditation process, which has become more difficult in recent years due to increasing regulation and pressure for greater accountability, Suskie offers expert guidance on understanding the underlying principles of the expectations of accrediting bodies. Using the model presented here, which is much easier to understand than the sometimes complex resources provided by individual accrediting bodies, American colleges and universities can understand what they need to do to earn and maintain their regional accreditation as well as improve overall institutional quality for their students. You'll be able to: Identify ways to improve institutional quality Demonstrate the quality of your institution to internal and external constituents Avoid wasting time and energy on misguided institutional processes to comply with accreditation requirements By focusing on why colleges and universities should take particular actions rather than only on what those actions should be, Five Dimensions of Quality gives them the knowledge and strategies to prepare for a successful review. It is an ideal resource for leaders, accreditation committee members, and everyone on campus.

The Data Quality Assessment Framework shows you how to measure and monitor data quality, ensuring quality over time. You'll start with general concepts of measurement and work your way through a detailed framework of more than three dozen measurement types related to five objective dimensions of quality: completeness, timeliness, consistency, validity, and integrity. Ongoing measurement, rather than one time activities will help your organization reach a new level of data quality. This plain-language approach to measuring data can be understood by both business and IT and provides practical guidance on how to apply the DQAF within any organization enabling you to prioritize measurements and effectively report on results. Strategies for using data measurement to govern and improve the quality of data and guidelines for applying the framework within a data asset are included. You'll come away able to prioritize which measurement types to implement, knowing where to place them in a data flow and how frequently to measure. Common conceptual models for defining and storing of data quality results for purposes of trend analysis are also included as well as generic business requirements for ongoing measuring and monitoring including calculations and comparisons that make the measurements meaningful and help understand trends and detect anomalies. - Demonstrates how to leverage a technology independent data quality measurement framework for your specific business priorities and data quality challenges - Enables discussions between business and IT with a non-technical vocabulary for data quality measurement - Describes how to measure data quality on an ongoing basis with generic measurement types that can be applied to any situation

The first edition of Assessing Student Learning has become the standard reference for college faculty and administrators who are charged with the task of assessing student learning within their institutions. The second edition of this landmark book offers the same practical guidance and is designed to meet ever-increasing demands for improvement and accountability. This edition includes expanded coverage of vital assessment topics such as promoting an assessment culture, characteristics of good assessment, audiences for assessment, organizing and coordinating assessment, assessing attitudes and values, setting benchmarks and standards, and using results to inform and improve teaching, learning, planning, and decision making.

This one-of-a-kind book provides an in-depth analysis of nursing practice as a concept and area of study, rather than as an aggregation of specific techniques and skills. The text addresses the essential features of nursing practice using a five-level nursing framework developed by the author. This framework promotes a deep understanding of how nursing should be holistically practiced rather than focusing on particular nursing competencies. The book stresses the importance of developing a multifaceted, adaptable approach to nursing that integrates all of its complexities, including philosophy, knowledge and knowing, and situational contingencies. Also addressed are the integral components of nursing practice, including essential tools, collaboration, knowledge application, competence, expertise, and quality of practice. The book discusses and analyzes the five levels of nursing practice—the nursing perspective, nursing knowledge for practice, the philosophy of nursing practice, the dimension of nursing practice, and the process of nursing practice—to provide a model for how nursing should be practiced in order to better serve patients and advance knowledge for practice. With its in-depth perspective and unique focus, the book draws from nursing knowledge, but also from the fields of philosophy and the social sciences. As such, it analyzes the essential features and characteristics of nursing practice through a broader lens. The book also includes a comprehensive bibliography from nursing, philosophy, and social sciences literature. It is designed as both a text for graduate-level nursing students and as an authoritative reference for practicing nurses, educators, and researchers. Key Features: Presents a five-level analytical model of nursing practice developed by the author Provides an in-depth examination of the essential features and dimensions of nursing practice using this analytical model Addresses the essential tools of nursing practice; collaborative practice, knowledge application, and competence; expertise; and quality of practice Includes a comprehensive bibliography relevant to the study of nursing practice from nursing, philosophy, and the social sciences

This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.

The book describes the most important quality management tools (e.g. QFD, Kano model), methods (e.g. FMEA, Six Sig-ma) and standards (e.g. IS0 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 27001, ISO 45001, SA8000). It reflects recent developments in the field. It is considered a must-read for students, academics, and practitioners.

Excellence in customer service is the hallmark of success in service industries and among manufacturers of products that require reliable service. But what exactly is excellent service? It is the ability to deliver what you promise, say the authors, but first you must determine what you can promise. Building on seven years of research on service quality, they construct a model that, by balancing a customer's perceptions of the value of a particular service with the customer's need for that service, provides brilliant theoretical insight into customer expectations and service delivery. For example, Florida Power & Light has developed a sophisticated, computer-based lightening tracking system to anticipate where weather-related service interruptions might occur and strategically position crews at these locations to quicken recovery response time. Offering a service that customers expect to be available at all times and that they will miss only when the lights go out, FPL focuses its energies on matching customer perceptions with potential need. Deluxe Corporation, America's highly successful check printer, regularly exceeds its customers' expectations by shipping nearly 95% of all orders by the day after the orders were received. Deluxe even put U.S. Postal Service stations inside its plants to speed up delivery time. Customer expectations change over time. To anticipate these changes, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company regularly monitors the expectations and perceptions of their customers, using focus group interviews and the authors' 22-item generic SERVQUAL questionnaire, which is customized by adding questions covering specific aspects of service they wish to track. The authors' groundbreaking model, which tracks the five attributes of quality service -- reliability, empathy, assurance, responsiveness, and tangibles -- goes right to the heart of the tendency to overpromise. By comparing customer perceptions with expectations, the model provides marketing managers with a two-part measure of perceived quality that, for the first time, enables them to segment a market into groups with different service expectations.

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Cultural Studies - Basics and Definitions, grade: 1,3, Dresden Technical University, language: English, abstract: Be it in the business world, as a traveller, trying to master a foreign language, or to teach it, nowadays we meet people of foreign cultures more frequently than this was the case just 50 or even 100 years ago. Even though linguistic difficulties are often surmountable through English as lingua franca, meeting people from cultures we are unfamiliar with bears the potential for many misunderstandings. These in turn quite often lead to lack of understanding, conflict, even political disaster, like in 2005 with the Danish caricature scandal involving the newspaper Jyllands Posten, when a fundamentalist Muslim cleric from Egypt living in Denmark felt offended and ridiculed in his religious beliefs by caricatures featuring Mohammed. The Islamic world thereby rallied to the case, and did not only react with outrage and boycott, but with violent attacks, in the course of which 140 people lost their lives and several hundred were injured. Milder reactions, like rejection and hidden resentment are, however, the more common outcomes due to intercultural misunderstandings. How otherwise would there be stereotypes mostly carrying negative connotations, like the obedient Chinese, the superficial American, or the super-punctual German lacking humor? The Dutch anthropologist and cultural scientist Geert Hofstede suggests that the reason for such misunderstandings is a culturally divergent, often concealed moral concept with a direct impact on human actions and thinking. Hofstede has devoted himself to this issue and has developed a model based on a long-time study, elucidating peculiarities of and differences between national cultures in comparison. Thereby Hofstede classified national cultures according to five pillars, also called dimensions, which dependent on the nation vary markedly and in his study are set in relation to each other. The subject and the goal of this assignment is to present the main features of Hofstede’s Model of the Five Dimensions of National Cultures. Following, the practical applicability of this model is briefly discussed.

This book provides an analytical framework for understanding how the concept of quality peace can be used to evaluate post-conflict peacebuilding, using social science, statistics, and case studies. Including contributions from more than 20 researchers and practitioners, it argues that the quality of the peace in a post-conflict state relates to the extent to which peace accords are implemented, the agreed-upon mechanism for the non-violent resolution of the conflict, and the available social space for civil and political actors. To arrive at the concept of 'quality peace', the authors evaluate the existing literature and identify a lack of a satisfactory means of measuring outcomes, and consequently how these might be researched comparatively. The volume problematizes the 'quality peace' concept as a way to understand the origins of armed conflict as well as problems deriving from the conflict dynamics and the need for social, political, and economic changes in the post-conflict periods. The book emphasizes five dimensions as crucial for quality peace in a post-accord society. Negotiations and agreements not only aim at avoiding the return of war but also seek to: (1) promote reconciliation, (2) develop mechanisms for resolving future disputes, (3) provide for reliable security, (4) open economic opportunities for marginalized segments of the population, and (5) generate space for civil society. These five dimensions together provide for quality peace after war. They are studied in the context of internal armed conflicts in which multiple parties have signed a peace agreement. This book will be of great interest to students of peace and conflict studies, civil wars, global governance, security studies, and International Relations in general.

This book examines policy issues, projection models, and data bases pertaining to the supply of, demand for, and quality of teachers in the United States from kindergarten to twelfth grade. It identifies additional data needed to clarify policy issues or for use in projection models, with a long-range view of contributing to the development of a teaching force of higher quality in the United States. The book has major implications for the teacher work force and for statisticians and researchers involved in investigating, modeling, and projecting teacher supply, demand, and quality.