Benchmarking

A Project designed for

Al-Imam Mohammed Bin Saud Islamic University College of Languages and Translation Department of English

Prepared By

Dr. Wael M. As-Sawi

October 2012

1. Benchmarking
1.1 Purpose What is the purpose of this project? Who is it for? It has three potential uses. It provides senior staff with tools to ascertain performance trends in the program and to initiate continuous self-improvement activities. Second, it is sufficiently well developed for use by our program to compare performance on all or some of the areas covered. Third, some of the benchmarks can be used by any academic program now to ascertain its competitive position relative to others. The objective of the project has been to identify the most important aspects of academic programs and to find ways of benchmarking them. It assumes excellence and value adding are goals sought by all academic programs. It assumes also that those aspects of excellence and value adding that can be easily quantified are not the only ones worth taking into account; the drivers of future performance are often qualitative. 1.2 Why benchmark No single program, however large, can encompass all knowledge. Every program has to make choices. It is demanding to be world class in its academic fields. Each program has to prioritize the use of its resources and use them to best effect. Knowing whether it is succeeding in its aims is another more demanding level of difficulty. The key consequential question is how university leaders will know where their institutions stand and how they can be improved. 1.3 Why programs are different. The quality of programs cannot be ascertained by the bottom line measures that apply to commercial firms, or by the yardsticks that might apply in large governmental organizations. How do they differ? All programs teach undertake some research, and provide services to the community. Within that broad commonality, however, constrained by their history and funding sources, they have adopted widely diversified missions.

They do not seek simply to communicate a standard body of knowledge in each course. The knowledge conveyed in courses is of a different type. The courses and the teaching are informed by the latest research, which often challenges or even overturns previously accepted knowledge. The knowledge is leading edgeprovisional. Students are expected to learn to create their own intellectual maps and to search out information for themselves. They enroll as students and staff members seek employment in universities for a variety of reasons, including intellectual curiosity and a search for truth. Some students, but certainly not all, seek a vocational qualification as a primary objective. Program commitment to research varies. Some are research intensive: others are not. Some emphasize individual research activity while others seek to create teams in pursuit of preeminence in a limited number of research fields. Some management thinking urges on programs the desirability of commercial approaches to management. That type of thinking suggests that a first step should be the declaration of a clear mission and strategic directions and its imposition on the program. The processes within the program would then be confined to working out the program details to realize the mission. Furthermore the suggestion misunderstands the nature of a program. Most academics regard themselves as partners rather than employees. They hold fiercely to their independence and right to be involved in major decisions. They believe in collegiality; they can be led but not coerced. Good program leadership, therefore, has to bring together the aspirations and thinking of the whole college and university community. It is in the nature of the quest for new knowledge that no external authority can say with certainty that the approaches chosen by particular individuals or a particular program are irrefutably wrong. In most aspects academic programs are thus to be measured by criteria other than profit or return on assets. Nevertheless, benchmarking is as essential in academic programs as it is in other spheres. They need reference points for good practice and for ways of improving their functioning. 1.4 Implementation of benchmarking Regular benchmarking is best undertaken under the authority of a senior executive, acting with the authority of the Vice-Dean of Quality Assurance and with the support of an appropriate planning unit. A broad spectrum of senior university executive staff should be involved and the results published regularly.
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Those working on benchmarking should work in teams with regular briefing sessions. An important function of leaders is to cross-relate information among team members to ensure that diagnoses in each functional area are of greater benefit than the sum of individual benchmark ratings. Often a pre-condition of improvement of a function will be the achievement of a better level of service or provision of a missing service elsewhere in the department program. Self-analysis should extend not only to the level of performance achieved in each benchmark but, crucially, to how the program could improve in that area (improve even on Good Practice). The use of outside experts for check assessments should be regarded as mandatory: the possibilities of self-delusion are otherwise high. More effort should go into defining ways to improve performance than into refining performance measurement data. In some areas the level of data is adequate enough to compare broad levels of performance while not being beyond challenge over details. Where those judgments can be made, the broad trends and comparisons are the data that matter.

Benchmark Data Request Form

Department of English College of Languages & Translation Al-Imam Mohammed Bin Saud Islamic University
Imam U Program: _________________________________________________________

Benchmark Program:_________________________________________________________ Benchmark college/University: _________________________________________________ Contact Name: Contact E-Mail: _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________

The Department of English, The College of Languages and Translation at Imam Mohammed Bin Saud Islamic University is conducting a benchmarking study in order to compare its academic program to other programs that are considered to be among the best in the KSA. We are requesting your assistance in completing our study. Please provide the information requested below from the most recent 12-month reporting period at your institution. The student date should come from Fall 2012 only. Define your reporting period by specifying your inclusive dates in the space provided below. After completing this form, please return it by email to: qualangcol@gmail.com. Your assistance in this regard is greatly appreciated. Reporting Period ______________________________________________________________

Benchmarking Characteristics Criterion Measures

Academic Reputation

Data Reported

Academic Reputation Survey (assessed by Saudi MOHE) Academic Reputation Survey (assessed by employers/stakeholders)

Student Selectivity

# of Application for the program # of Enrollees / accepted students for the Intensive Course (Foundation Program) # of Enrollees / accepted students for the first academic level without intensive course # of students of first academic level students who passed the Intensive Course The Total Number of students in the first academic level Percentage of male students enrolled in the first level Percentage of female students enrolled in the first level

Student characteristics Undergraduate Headcount (male/ female) Graduate Headcount (male/ female) Total Headcount (male/ female) % of undergraduate male students % of undergraduate female students # of graduate male students awarded Bachelor's degree # of graduate female students awarded Bachelor's degree The total number of BA degrees awarded # of postgraduate male students awarded M.A # of graduate female students awarded M.A The total number of M.A degrees awarded The total number of PHD degrees awarded Retention and Attrition Student retention rate Student attrition rate Faculty characteristics

The Total number of faculty teaching in the program % of faculty with the degree of Full Professor % of faculty with the degree of associate Professor % of faculty with the degree of assistant Professor % of faculty with the degree of lecturer (MA holders) % of faculty with the degree of teaching assistant (BA holders) Class size Student-teacher ratio Teaching load per faculty % of full-time teaching faculty % of part-time teaching faculty # of courses provided # of credit hours on graduation # of course syllabi and specifications available The average % of students' satisfaction of the program

Course characteristics

Research # of Citations per faculty in international academic journals # of Published articles per faculty in regional academic journals

# of faculty receiving research funding # of the postgraduate students (MA level) # of the postgraduate students (PHD level) % postgraduate students who are graduated from the same program

% postgraduate students who are enrolled from outside the program Average Research Assessment Exercise score per member of staff Total number of books available Total number of electronic material The average number of students using the library services per day The size of the library Total number of the audio-video material available The level of provision of service (in-site and online) The specified opening hours Access to the Internet Access to e-mail level of access, training and support for information services devoted to research Average % of alumni show satisfaction with the program

Library and Information Services

Alumni satisfaction

Graduate outcomes Difference between the actual and predicted graduation rate for this year # of graduates taking up employment

# of graduates taking up postgraduate studies % of BA awarded students with the first class honors degrees % of BA awarded students with the second class honors degrees