Abstract:

In a competitive environment quality assurance (QA) is an important topic for everyone who is involved in education: the academic staff, the students, as well the taxpayers. QA, in higher education, refers to a series of review procedures designed to safeguard academic standards and promote learning opportunities for students. The present paper demonstrates that if the universities aim to achieve high standards of quality then their developmental policies have to reflect a good understanding of the goals and needs of the faculty within the organizational context in which they perform. Therefore, in our study we have tried to identify the prioritized professional objectives of university teachers regarding their own professional development, and the activities that they consider useful. For the achievement of these objectives, we elaborated a questionnaire for polling the faculty's need from all academic departments of a Romanian University (Babeș-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca). The paper has been structured in three sections: a) first, a theoretical background in order to familiarize the reader with the issues of quality assurance and professional development in higher education; b) second, a brief description of the methodology employed in the elaboration and administration of the questionnaire; c) finally, the results are discussed as well as their utility for development and implementation of consistent, formalized instructional improvement programs.

Keywords: quality assurance, instructors' professional development, higher education, faculty needs