The German agency Evalag’s Theodor Leiber has contributed to several recent publications.
The publication Impact Evaluation of Quality Management in Higher Education works towards overcoming the lack of systematic impact evaluations in higher education (HE), particularly analyses which are not restricted to ex-post gathered data and expert assessments. The volume’s nine chapters gather theoretical and empirical analyses of success factors, promises and pitfalls as well as outcomes and impacts of various quality management approaches in European universities. The empirical studies refer to cases from Finland, Germany, Romania and Spain.
Another article on quality management in HE entitled Organisational Change and Development Through Quality Management in Higher Education Institutions: Theory, Practice, and Recommendations for Change Agents published in the book Evidence-Based Initiatives for Organizational Change and Development argues that in higher education institutions system-wide organisational development is typically driven by implementing systemic quality management, while universities are usually rather reluctant towards direct organisational development activities and procedures. The chapter explicates the basic characteristics of systemic quality management and organisational development and their interdependence, discusses practice-checked criteria for the implementation and evaluation of quality management/organisational development, and describes a practice-used action research model of organisational development. Furthermore, fundamental goals and success factors of quality management-driven organisational development are discussed including recommendations for change agents.
A third article identifies a comprehensive set of performance indicators for learning and teaching, which are meant to give a representative overview of how learning and teaching can actually be measured. Leiber argues that learning and teaching quality must be approached in a holistic way across the four subdomains of a learning and teaching environment: teaching processes, learning processes, and learning outcomes and their assessment. It is shown how the performance indicators related to these areas align with and are justified by a synoptic understanding of learning and teaching comprising behavioural, information processing, cognitive, social (constructivism) and humanistic theories of learning.