University Helps External Provider Of Acupuncture Courses To Achieve Academic Accreditation
The University worked in partnership with ALIED, a private company which provides acupuncture training for health care professionals, to provide academic accreditation for their own courses.
ALIED (Acupuncture Learning & Integrated Educational Development) approached the University’s Allied Health Professions and Midwifery Department regarding accreditation for their foundation acupuncture courses.
The university was contacted due to their reputation for providing a wide range of postgraduate continuing professional development activities, their flexible and responsive attitude to new opportunities and through a personal contact at the University.
Following initial discussions, the process of approving ALIED as an external partner of the University and offering students who completed the foundation acupuncture course the option to gain academic credits was initiated.
Business challenge
The process of approval of an external partner is demanding, but ALIED were well placed to do this as they already had a robust assessment strategy and quality processes in place for their courses. The challenge was to ensure that the courses were of a comparable level to other postgraduate modules being offered in the School in terms of student effort, level and assessment.
How was the University involved?
The University helped by supporting ALIED through the approval process and have held regular meetings since then to monitor and review the outcomes of the courses. In addition, peer review of teaching, moderation of all assessments by University staff as well as monitoring of the courses by an external examiner are an integral part of the continuing support and quality assurance and enhancement of the courses.
Real business results
To date, 213 health care professionals, including physiotherapists, sports therapists and osteopaths, have sought academic credits from their acupuncture course. This number has increased year on year.
This provides practitioners evidence of their health care learning and allows accrual of credits towards a postgraduate certificate, diploma or MSc. Coursework produced by students on the course has been of a high enough standard to be worth publishing in acupuncture journals.
“The University accreditation of this course has been invaluable for the tutors, by maintaining a robust external review of the course, course material and educational standards, providing impartial, external, quality assurance and in maintaining academic links with current research. The result is that delegates on this course are provided with a quality of excellence in acupuncture training which meets with standards of clinical and academic knowledge and skills.“
Find out more
Contact The Business Services Team
tel +44(0)1707 286406
be@herts.ac.uk