The Teaching Capability Maturity Model for Teachers in Higher Education: a Preliminary Study

摘要

To address teaching quality in higher education, in addition to the organizational focus and the momentary evaluation methods (e.g. students' or peer-based teaching evaluations), emphasis should also be put on teachers and their teaching processes. In software industry, there is a model called Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMM/CMMI). CMM/CMMI collects a set of software processes for a development team to follow. It also defines several levels of process institutionalization for evaluating the stability of the software team. In this research, we attempt to apply the CMM/CMMI concepts to higher education, and develop a Teaching Capability Maturity Model (T-CMM) for tertiary teachers to manage and improve teaching quality. The entire research consists of two parts: (1) the applicability of CMM/CMMI to teaching quality in higher education and (2) the development of the T-CMM. This paper serves as the first part; it introduces CMM/CMMI, and then identifies several issues concerning the application. Finally, this paper outlines the future development of such an applied model.