Industrial Training Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance (QA) is a process-centered approach to ensure that an organization is providing the best possible products or services. Quality Assurance relates to quality control which focuses on the end product or service. Whereas quality control and quality assurance have been used interchangeably, quality assurance seeks to enhance and improve the processes that are used to create the end result (product/service). Among the parts of the process that are considered in QA are leadership, planning, design, development, production and service.
For an adult learner or program participant, a quality education or training experience is likely to be one which prepares or contributes to their career, and/or generally supports his/her personal development. For program delivery staff, quality lies in their capacity to effectively generate and transmit new knowledge to participants. For governments and public institutions, quality normally translates to efficient and effective use of public resources in order to achieve the best outcomes possible. For industry, quality often rests in the skills and competences of graduates’/program completers that they employ. These views of quality are not necessarily contradictory, and most quality assurance mechanisms attempt to develop processes to ensure each vision of quality is achieved.
Quality Assurance in industrial training refers to different approaches desired to achieve of transparency and objectivity in an attempt to:
- Ensure the quality of instruction,
- Relevancy of curriculum,
- Guide internal processes and structures (such as minimum classroom size),
- Validation of learning credentials.