Abstract:

Developing policies that guide institutional practices is one way of ensuring accountability and efficiency. This paper aims to document the journey of developing various policies at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) in Oman, their implementation, monitoring, and assessing their outcomes. It will explore a number of issues that can impact the application of policies, including challenges hindering their implementation and the impact of policies on institutional practices.

The paper will start with setting the scene for the need to develop policies and procedures at a Higher Education Institution (HEI). Following that, it will describe the process of developing a framework for policy management at SQU (Policy of Making Policies). The paper will present the Developmental Framework for developing policies and the Operational Framework for monitoring and reviewing policies. The paper will also explore some issues pertaining to the development of policies, the implementation and follow-up; highlighting the Staff Induction Policy as an example. The data presented will include survey data on the impact of the Staff Induction Policy on the actual practices in this area and the employees’ feedback on improvement in practices after the implementation of the policy.

Following the discussion of the policy management system at SQU, the paper will present some of the challenges that faced the Quality Assurance Office in the process of spreading the culture of policy and procedures documentation.

It is hoped that this paper will have implications to the wider higher education community in terms of sharing our experience of developing, implementing and monitoring policies and the link between policies and quality assurance at HEIs.

The paper will reference international literature on the design and implementation of policies in higher education.

Keywords:

Institutional Policy, Quality Assurance, Higher Education.