The Higher Education Standards Framework (HESF) 2021 under the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011 (TEQSA, 2021) stipulates the standards or requirements that a higher education provider must meet and/or continue to meet to be registered.

Standard 3.2 relates to Teaching. In particular, the scholarship activities that are concerned with academic staff engaging with ‘current knowledge and scholarship in relevant academic disciplines, study of the underlying theoretical and conceptual frameworks of the academic disciplines or fields of education or research represented in the course, and emerging concept that are informed by recent scholarship, current research findings and, where applicable, advances in practice.’

TIIS has initiated the Summative Teaching Review (STaR) Program to address this HESF Standard and one that aligns to TIIS’ operational context of a private higher education provider. STaR demonstrates that the Scholarly Activities at TIIS are of quality and enables TIIS to kick-start its vision and journey of building excellence in scholarly activities in learning and teaching.

STaR at TIIS is a formal evaluation of academic staff’s scholarships of learning and teaching, underpinned by Dimensions of Teaching (Crisp et al., 2009). Academic staff will be able to use the review to make improvements in the curriculum – course design, assessments, learning outcomes, and teaching-related activities. It is mandatory for every academic staff who teaches at TIIS.

Additional requirements will be published in TIIS’s Student Handbook and on the website for the information of persons seeking enrolment.

The secondary purpose of STaR is to support academic staff gain evidence and insights to complement TIIS student evaluation surveys. A recent study by Heffernan (2022) has reported that while negative issues with student evaluation surveys were on the rise, abusive and derogatory comments directed to women and marginalised academics were highest, and severely impact academic staff’s wellbeing, mental health, and career progression.

Crisp, G. T., Sadler, R., Krause, K.-L., Wills, S., Brown, C., McLean, J., Daltong, H., Le Lievere, K., & Brougham, B. (2009). Peer Review of Teaching for Promotion Purposes: A project to develop and implement a pilot program of external peer review of teaching in four Australian universities.

Heffernan, T. (2022). Abusive comments in student evaluations of courses and teaching: the attacks women and marginalised academics endure. HIgher Education. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00831-x

TEQSA. (2021). Higher Education Standards Framework (Threshold Standards) 2021, Department of Education, Skills and Employment.