About QA Focus

Who Are We?

The QA Focus project was funded to support the JISC's Information Environment programme by encouraging participating projects to develop appropriate quality assurance (QA) processes which will ensure that project deliverables comply with standards and best practices.

QA Focus was provided by a partnership of UKOLN (University of Bath) and the AHDS.

What Do We Do?

• Advise JISC's 5/99, FAIR and X4L programme projects on their approaches to Quality Assurance (QA) when creating and delivering the project's digital resources.
• Review the projects' QA reports and procedures and if necessary, liaise with them and JISC.
• Monitor aspects of project work, in conjunction with projects and JISC cluster groups.
• Develop a "QA Self-Assessment Toolkit" to allow future projects to benefit from the experience and lessons learnt from the current projects.
• Create a channel for information between JISC (funders), the JISC services and the projects themselves.
• Work with the JISC services to help them provide high quality support with the most relevant, useful and productive standards.
• Discover, evaluate and disseminate examples of best practice from the projects to other JISC projects and programmes.

How Does QA Focus Work?

QA Focus works by:

• Adopting the life cycle model as the basis for its QA work (creation, management, collection development, access, repackaging, ...).
• Covering a range of areas including:
  • Digitisation of resources
  • Software development
  • Metadata
  • Learning materials
  • Web
  • Deployment into service
• Evaluating project's QA plans (as described in their contract).
• Liaising with projects over the requirements of the key QA procedures applicable to their work.
• Liaising with the JISC Advisory Services over their provision of advice and address maintenance and feedback mechanisms.
• Overseeing QA work using various approaches including questionnaires, workshops, site visits and remote analysis.

QA Focus: An Opportunity To Learn

We want to develop a culture of self-learning based upon examples of the successes within the projects whilst learning from the challenges faced and overcome during production.

The lessons learnt from this process will then allow the JISC to establish the most useful and productive standards, whilst promoting best practice for the benefit of all current and future projects.

Further Information

For more information on the QA Focus visit the Web site at <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focus/>

Flyer

This flyer is also available as an MS Word document in two formats, which are intended for printing on a printer with double-sided capabilities.

QA Focus Flyer

[MS Word format - A5 format for double sided printer]

[MS Word format - A4 format]