Australia's top education auditing body this week (March 2) commended CQUniversity for its conduct and 10-year visionary plan, affirming that CQUniversity's decisive steps to enhance its teaching and learning and further develop its research had won University-wide and community-wide support and endorsement...

According to the report, staff and students were unanimous in their praise for the support, quality, and commitment of CQUniversity's academic learning support across the whole organisation.

Professor Scott Bowman

VC's video and audio comments on AUQA available online

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"The national education quality-assurance agency conclusions are objective and assure our confidence in CQUniversity's growing role in Central Queensland and in higher education," explained CQUniversity Vice-Chancellor Scott Bowman, following the release of the exhaustive review by the Australian Universities Quality Agency.

The report from AUQA, the first since 2006, also concluded that the University's enabling programs, academic support, library services and IT resources were commendable for their scope, effect and extent on the students' learning experience. The Agency identified several good practices in international education, too, including the University's robust support for international students.

Authors of the 59-page document, which focused on the University's teaching and learning and international activities, welcomed actions and plans by the University to engage students more fully in activities designed to continually improve teaching and course quality. It noted and supported CQUniversity's plans to expand its academic and support services to domestic distance education students at its Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane campuses.

Praise came from the review team, too, for the University's learning management system, known as Moodle, the on-line environment in which students work.

"Staff and students are positive about the new [system]," the auditors found, adding that its strength was that the system - which will grow to fully realise the implications of emerging technology -- would accommodate a range of learning styles and needs.

Whilst AUQA was clearly supportive of the University's strategic objectives and commended CQUniversity for many of its academic procedures, Vice-Chancellor Scott Bowman did say that the University needed to "seek out more actively and act upon more student feedback" and "improve its game" in a few areas.

"AUQA  is positive about our plans for program development, academic success, and student mobility and feedback. And it has recommended ways in which to constantly improve by being more self-aware and learning from others - which, indeed, is great advice for anyone to follow on their learning journey."

CQUniversity will action the 10 recommendations made by the panel.