Abstract:

Since the COVID-19 Pandemic have affected the administration of the higher education institutions, most of the universities have changed their administration and management methodologies by using different digital technologies from Zoom to Google Drive, and WhatsApp. In this period of time, the new higher education institutions’ quality assurance has needed by taking into account the online distance teaching, learning, researching, assessing, collaborating, and networking in order to manage and lead properly the universities.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, although the universities were improvingly using different digital platforms, software programs, and digital technologies, the data collection processes were not so successful among the stakeholders. During this period of the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the stakeholders of the higher education institutions from professors, researchers, lecturers, teaching assistant to students, managers, and administrations have become more effective in using the different digital technologies, which affect the quality assurance, particularly in data collection, collaboration, and networking.

To analyze deeply how the intensive usage of the digital technologies on the improving of the higher education institutions’ quality assurance during the COVID-19 pandemic, the well-rounded qualitative research had been strategically conducted. The main goal of this qualitative research is to see how the effects of the most used digital technologies on collecting data for the quality assurance. Additionally, the impacts of the administration and management are analyzed by using different digital technologies from Zoom to Google Drive, and WhatsApp in developing internalized and qualified culture by using these new digital technologies which are becoming new collaborating and networking platforms.

The qualitative research study had been decided to conduct to understand clearly ‘how’ the effects of the intensive usage of the digital technologies on the improving of the higher education institutions’ quality assurance by working together with the related responsible experts (32) in the quality assurance departments of the two universities. By using 15 semi-structured interviews, the qualitative data were collected and analyzed under NVivo system.

The collected data clarified that as the most participants (97%) mentioned the quality assurance was not easy in their higher education institutions (HEIs). They needed to use evidence-based and output-oriented institutional evaluation mechanism. However, most of the experts (88%) in the HEIs suffered because of the lack of experience in understanding the quality assurance principals and correlated data collection, evidence based outputs, and their adaptation in order to improve internalized qualified culture in the HEIs. Since the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the intensive usage of the digital technologies, the participants (85%) agreed that the intensive usage of the digital technologies on the improving of the higher education institutions’ quality assurance. As they pointed out, the intensive remote working on the digital platforms such as Google Drive, Zoom, and WhatsApp clearly improved their effectiveness and efficiencies.
Consequently, this research shows that the principals of the quality assurance could be intensively internalized by using effectively and efficiently the digital technologies in HEIs. More importantly, the evidence based data collection, which affects the level of the quality assurance standards, would exponentially be improved due the collaboration and networking in the digital technologies’ platforms.

Keywords:

Digital Technologies, Quality Assurance, Higher Education, Universities, Quality Assurance Principals, Collaboration, Higher Education Management, Leadership.