Student Association Quality Guide - September 2005

1. Background
2. The Monash Approach to Quality
3. Applying the Quality Cycle: Plan
4. Applying the Quality Cycle: Act
5. Applying the Quality Cycle: Evaluate
6. Applying the Quality Cycle: Improve

Background

Following initial discussions with student leaders in June 2005, Professor Graham Webb, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Quality) and Robyn Harris of the Centre for Higher Education Quality (CHEQ) met with Presidents of Monash University Student Associations on 5 August 2005 to discuss the management of student associations and the development of a Quality Guide to assist student association office bearers.  Those attending were:  Ollie Bennett (Monash Student Association, Clayton); Michael Josem (Monash University Student Union, Caulfield); and Bruce Thomson (Monash Postgraduate Association).  A draft of this document was then circulated to all nine Monash Student Association Presidents for comment.  Suggestions received were incorporated into the final version.

The term of office for Student Presidents and other office bearers is typically only 12 months.  This means that in-coming elected office holders of Student Associations are required to learn rapidly about their roles and responsibilities, and to do so 'on the job'.  This Guide is aimed at assisting this process.

It was suggested that a typical annual calendar for an association would be useful and that this may be as follows:

Note: MSA works on a 13 month calendar and varies slightly from the above.  Elections are held in September each year.

The Monash Approach to Quality

The Monash approach to quality is outlined in "Quality at Monash: Values and Principles" which makes explicit some of the core values and principles that underpin the University's approach to quality.

Monash places major importance in individuals and work teams taking responsibility for their own quality assurance and improvement processes.  Such an approach is consistent with the needs of a large, diverse, international and knowledge-based organisation.  Monash also values collaboration and the sharing of ideas for quality assurance and continuous improvement within the university.  It also values a long-term  view of quality through organisational learning  In developing this document, student associations have demonstrated their willingness to take responsibility for their quality processes, to work collaboratively together to share ideas and thus to contribute towards organisational learning for the benefit of all.

The approach of Monash University towards quality is summarised in the Quality Cycle of plan, act, evaluate (monitor and review) and improve.

The Quality Cycle affords an approach to quality throughout the organisation and suggests that student association actively plan their work, periodically collect feedback on their role and functioning, reflect in this to effect improvements and if possible, seek comparisons in order to gauge their effectiveness against similar internal and external groups.

This document outlines ways in which this quality cycle may assist student associations in developing a conceptual framework for these activities.

Plan

This aspect of the quality cycle denotes formal planning at all levels including university level planning, faculty divisional planning, school, departmental or unit planning, course or work team planning.  At the individual level it reflects the planning that people do either by project, or over time, including yearly or daily planning.

For student association, planning activities may take many forms including the following.

• Early meeting of in-coming office bearers to map priorities for the coming year.
• Setting schedule of association committee meetings.
• Setting and agreeing budget.
• Identifying important external stakeholders and the ways in which the association is able to communicate most effectively with them.

An induction program for new office holders may include consideration of the following aspects.

• Principles and values of the association.
• Internal work practices such as executive meeting process etc.
• Committee structure and terms of reference.
• Current issues in Monash and in the higher education sector generally.
• Organisation chart of University senior management and committees.
• Techniques for ensuring effective representation on University/faculty committees.
• Effective lobbying.
• Balancing work, study and life for office holders.
• IT skills.
• Where to find equipment and resources (eg for public events).
• Financial procedures and reporting (procurement).

Resources that might usefully be compiled for the incoming executive at the time of induction include the following.

• Constitution.
• Association's organisation chart showing executive and staff positions.
• Statements of roles/responsibilities of office bearers.
• Position description for employees.
• Agendas and minutes of committee minutes.
• Year planner/calendar.
• Semester guide/catalogue of events.
• Recent copy of association newsletter/magazine.
• Overview of association website structure.
• Organisational charts of University senior management and committee structures.
• List of important University web links.

Act

This dimension of the quality cycle includes all the intentional activities that are undertaken to meet objectives, implement plans and produce outcomes.

One way in which associations begin to translate their plans into action is through the definition of policy statements that are used to guide their work.  Associations may also develop an agreed procedure for the creation and communication of policy statements.

Activities of associations will vary considerably depending on the nature and properties of the association and will be described in annual events calendars, newspapers and magazines and on website.

Evaluate

This dimension includes two major aspects - monitoring and review.  Monitoring is a short and medium term activity mainly of developmental or formative purposes.  It may use formal or informal methods and make use of existing data or generate new data.  Action and monitoring usually develop together, each informing the other.  Review is a longer term and more formal process that has both formative and summative purposes and often includes an external perspective.

Monitor

One of the main ways in which student associations are able to monitor the effectiveness of their activities is through selection of a number of performance indicators that can be recorded and reported to members.  These may include the following.

• Participation rates at events.
• Formal evaluation surveys completed by participants.
• Hits on website.
• Online feedback.
• Response time to service requests.
• Log of complaints with association services.

Other ways of monitoring effectiveness include the following.

• Holding open discussion fora with students (campus-based or online)
• Feedback from committee chairs.
• Comments from University senior management.

Some associations have active links with state or national student associations (such as NUS, CAPA etc), which can provide valuable comparative information on how other organisations organise themselves and their work.

Review

As defined at Monash, review is typically cyclical and includes an external dimension.  Such reviews are not common in Monash student associations.  Instead, reviews undertaken by associations tend to concern particular activities or events rather than the association as a whole.  For example, financial management practice or website design might be the subject of a targeted review.  Such reviews may or may not include external participation.

Improve

This dimension relates to the process by which the results of evaluation - both monitoring and review - are fed back in order to generate improvement.  Often this causes modification to an existing plan or development of a new plan, and thus the quality cycle commences once more.

For student associations to build on and further develop the work of the previous executive team, the association needs to develop ways of identifying and acting in improvement opportunities and recording these in a way that will allow the in-coming executive to see clearly the intention without needing to reinvent the work of its predecessors.

As a membership organisation, consideration meeds to be given to informing members of the improvements and developments that the association has achieved.

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