Abstract:

Portuguese Naval Academy is one of three Military Higher Education Institutions of Portuguese Nacional Education system. Portuguese Naval Academy has to fulfil national quality assurance requirements to maintain its accreditation while aiming to prepare future Navy Officers and preparing them to become active, critical and responsible citizens.

As a holistic approach to cover all the processes in a higher education institution, in order to meet both students and Portuguese Navy expectations, Portuguese Naval Academy must drive strategic actions to achieve excellence in designated key quality indicators. These quality key indicators gathered in three main clusters areas: structural processes, which includes curricular development and learning outcomes achievement; integration processes, including sustainability and continuous improvement actions and support processes mainly focused on research and development.

A major study is ongoing conducing to the implementation of a new academic quality managing system to promote academic excellence. In this study, main strategic quality indicators and assessing the different instruments that evaluate their performance.

In the current paper, through an extensive literature review, the main quality assurance systems are benchmarked, to collect data to outline the new system to implement in Portuguese Naval Academy. A good quality management system is critical as a decision-making support system, not only to assure courses scientific quality, but also to student-orient the learning processes and to answer Navy’s future demands.

Keywords:

Quality assurance, student centred, learning, education, educational process.