May 28, 2013, by Teaching at Nottingham

QAA Review of Overseas Provision: University of Nottingham Ningbo Campus

Chris Bexton: “The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) recently sent a team of reviewers to the University’s Ningbo campus as part of a review of Transnational Education in China and early indications are that the review went very well, with UNNC achieving it’s ‘stated intention to provide the “Nottingham experience” in China in less than 8 years’. Importantly, it is also confirmed that the ‘academic standards and quality of the student learning experience at UNNC are equivalent to those of the home university’. The final report on the team’s visit is expected to be published by early May.

“Two teams of QAA reviewers comprising four members of staff and five peer reviewers visited a number of different institutions in China from 26 November to 7 December 2012, ensuring coverage of a number of different types of collaborative provision. The visit to the Ningbo campus lasted 1.5 days, and took place on 3 and 4 December. The QAA team, including Professor Jeremy Bradshaw from the University of Edinburgh and Dr Sylvia Hargreaves, formerly of Nottingham Trent University, met several groups whilst at Ningbo, including students (some of whom were on exchange programmes from the UK and Malaysia campuses), senior management, as well as teaching and administrative staff.

“The role of the QAA is to safeguard quality and standards in UK universities and colleges, in order to ensure that students have the best possible learning experience. In addition to carrying out reviews of institutions in the UK in order to fulfil this remit, the QAA also reviews the partnership arrangements that UK higher education institutions have made with organisations in other countries to deliver UK programmes and includes overseas campuses of UK institutions. The QAA has previously visited the Malaysia Campus (in 2009) and institutions with which the University has a collaborative arrangement in Singapore. All reports are available on the QAA website.

Chris Bexton,
Head of Quality and Standards,
Academic Services Division

If you’d like to find out more about this, please contact Chris.
christine.bexton@nottingham.ac.uk

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share on Google+
• Share on LinkedIn