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3.6.2 Do Phase

The “Do” phase involves desktop and site assessment.

Desktop Assessment

Desktop assessment is the first initial step before the site assessment. It is a
document review exercise which involves a preliminary assessment of the quality
assurance system based on the SAR and available documents. The desktop
assessment facilitates the development of an assessment plan. The AUN-QA
Assessment Planning Template (see Appendix B) is used for this purpose. The
desktop assessment allows the following preparatory work to be done:

 Clarifying SAR and quality assurance practices
 Identifying strengths and weaknesses of the quality assurance practices
 Identifying gaps in meeting the AUN-QA criteria
 Identifying possible areas for improvement
 Crafting questions for stakeholders’ interviews
 Identifying sources of evidence for verification

The purpose of assessment planning is to gather evidence of practices that meet
AUN-QA guidelines and criteria. The plan should include:

 Sources of information and evidence
 Strategy employed to gather the evidence as well as identifying documents and
records for review. Strategy may include interview, site visit, document review,
website access, etc.
 Identify individuals to be interviewed and plan schedule of interviews and site tour
 Prepare questions needed to gather the evidence

The SAR is the most critical document for desktop assessment and it should be
given to the assessors in advance before the actual assessment. It should give an
overview of the university, faculty, department and programme being assessed. The
SAR should cover all the criteria listed in the checklist. If any of the criteria are not
documented, the assessors should clarify with the contact person of the university.
Assessors should identify information and documents mentioned in the report and
verify them against the physical documents during the site assessment.

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