QUALITY ASSURANCE SYSTEM IN A HIGHER EDUCATION CENTRE AND ITS MANAGEMENT BASED ON GOOGLE WORKSPACE TOOLS

Resumen

The Quality Assurance System (QAS) of a higher education institution aims to generate competitive advantages among all interest groups, fundamentally in the process of academic training of the student body, and in a context of quality culture. The implementation of a QAS is one of the main concerns of universities and several aspects related to higher education must be considered, among which we can highlight the teaching and learning process, the planning of study plans and the results obtained of their development in each academic year, the level of satisfaction of the interest groups and the management of the teaching staff, among others. The continuous advances and developments in the scientific and technological field require that education be more efficient when it comes to training highly qualified specialists. In particular, in the field of engineering, the development of a QAS becomes especially important, since it is necessary to guarantee that the student body achieves both the academic skills and the professional skills and expected learning outcomes that the labour market requires. This paper presents an optimized model for managing the quality of the Linares School of Engineering (LSE) at the University of Jaén (UJA). This model has been designed by the UJA Quality Unit and it's based on the standards considered by the Agency for Scientific and University Quality of the regional government and it is based on seven procedures (strategic procedures, key procedures and support procedures). In addition to the procedures, the QAS manual describes the scope, the general characteristics of the model and the requirements it meets. Likewise, the definition of the Centre's quality policy and objectives are part of the QAS manual. On the other hand, QAS have not fully used information technology as a support tool, despite having to manage a considerable amount of data, as well as a large number of documents that evidence the actions carried out. In this sense, a management system has been designed and developed using the tools provided by Google Workspace to carry out the revision, evaluation and inspection of the different procedures that are part of the QAS proposed. The use of these tools helps to increase the self-organization and productivity of the administration of the educational institution, optimizing the management model.