Abstract:

Very often education quality management activities end up with just piles of certificates. The increase of the number of the certificates of accreditation is not accompanied with the increase of the system quality. This is, among others, the writer argues, due to the lack of constructive alignment in the quality management system components, particularly between the teaching-learning activities and assessment and the learning outcomes. This paper is presenting the results of a retrospective study to five-year endeavors on implementing a constructive alignment approach to the three aforementioned components in an attempt of sustaining a continual quality improvement of a program in an Indonesian university. The data were collected through document analyses, interviews, and participant observations, and it is found that in the research context, constructive alignment needed a prolonged time, and yet up to the time this paper is written it still needs a long way to go. This is due to the slow-growing of quality concern, supportive mindset and commitment, effective academic traditions, productive quality management system and quality support and facilities. Based on the findings, a hypothesis was then formulated that “the more effective and comprehensive a constructive alignment is, the more effective a program will be.” At the end of the paper, some recommendations are presented.

Keywords:

Constructive alignment, quality management system, continual quality improvement.