What Does an IQA Plan Include?
The idea behind Internal Quality Assurance is to ensure assessments are carried out fairly within an organisation. It is an incredibly important role, and needs to be planned in detail to ensure everything is up to standard. Today we are going to look at exactly what an IQA plan includes.
Internal Quality Assurance Cycle
An Internal Quality Assurer is responsible for carrying out a range of different activities to ensure that both the training and assessment process within an organisation are monitored. The IQA cycle itself contains 5 main activities:
- Identifying the product or service
- Planning
- Activity
- Decision & feedback
- Evaluation
As you can see this is quite an extensive process with lots of areas that need to be covered. The IQA must produce a plan that details what is going to be monitored; who will be involved in that stage; and when monitoring will take place. They also need to plan dates for team meetings, as well as when observations of assessor performance will happen.
What Is A Sampling Plan?
A sampling plan is also referred to as a sampling strategy. It contains a variety of data that can be used to make judgements about the quality of assessments being carried out.
There are several different ways in which data can be collected for a sampling plan:
- Vertical sampling – this is where a single unit or learning outcome is sampled across either multiple assessors or multiple sites.
- Horizontal sampling – this is where several units or learning outcomes are sampled, but from a single learner.
- Diagonal sampling – this is where samples are taken across both various units and learners to get a wider picture of quality and course delivery.
- Thematic sampling – this is where samples are taken based on a specific activity.
A sampling plan doesn’t have to be created by using just one of the data collection methods; a combination can be used. The main thing to be aware of is that a copy of every sampling plan must be submitted by the IQA to the centre.
Becoming An IQA
Does all of this data collection and measuring sound like something that you would be interested in? Then maybe becoming an IQA is the right career path for you. An IQA is an important role in almost every organisation. Someone has to be responsible for ensuring all assessments are followed to the highest standard, and that these are carried out fairly across the entire organisation.
The skills and experience that you acquire from becoming an IQA can be applied to various other roles too; so you will be widening your overall skill set. By becoming an IQA you will be a much more appealing candidate for other Assessor roles too as you will understand the entire assessment process in more detail.
If you are seriously considering becoming an IQA then you will need to take the Lead IQA course, also known as the Level 4 Certificate in Leading the Internal Quality Assurance of Assessment Processes and Practices. If you would like any more information regarding this course, or IQA plans then please feel free to call us on 01205 805155.