INTRODUCTION:

Quality assurance in Pharmacy education essentially means monitoring availability of 'Right' students and monitoring the process of effective teaching, learning practice in such a way that the trained graduate is useful to the needs of community as well as pharmaceutical industries. On international platform, few accreditating agencies specially designed for pharmacy education have been established. High quality of education equips learners with a diverse set of knowledge and skills that are relevant to the nation on one hand, and to attain levels of international recognition and reputation on the other.

In years to come, accreditation is going to be mandatory for all institutions; hence knowing background about what accreditation is necessary. Two national bodies are mainly involved in accreditation of institutes in India-

· National Accreditation and Assessment Council (NAAC)

· National Board of Accreditation (NBA)

While preview of NAAC was quality assurance of education under university and colleges imparting higher education in areas other than technical education, the mandate of NBA was limited to diploma, degree and post-graduate institutions in Engineering Technology and Pharmacy, Management, Architecture and related disciplines. Once a part of AICTE, NBA became autonomous. NBA aims to achieve this by stimulating the quality of teaching, self-evaluation, and accountability in the higher education system, which help institutions realize their academic objectives and adopt teaching practices that enables them to produce high-quality professionals and to assess and accredit the programs offered by the colleges or the institutions, or both, imparting technical and professional education.

Accreditation of pharmacy programmes¹:

NBA format and criteria for accreditation have been revised multiple times internally since January 2009 and the latest accepted criteria are prescribed in January 2013. In India, diploma pharmacy education comes under the purview of All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). Before attaining the autonomous status, NBA was a subsidiary body of AICTE. Thus being under purview of AICTE, Pharmacy education in India obviously became party to NBA and the process of accreditation. Accreditation is intended to provide degree-granting academic programmes with a credential. The credential can be used by the programmes and their constituencies – the general public, students and prospective students, employers, industry, and governmental bodies – to assess the quality of the programme and the extent to which it achieves its own goals as well as agreed-upon educational standards. The process of accreditation also serves to foster self-examination by educational institutions; to develop a dialog between constituents of educational programmes on content, methods, and outcomes; and to encourage continuous improvement of academic programmes. The value of the accreditation credential depends on the clarity of the description, which defines what it ascertains, the reputation and independence of the accrediting body, the fairness and transparency of the process leading to credential granting, and the time at which the credential was awarded. It has been experienced that credentials provided by non-governmental bodies.

Updated format of NBA:

All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) periodically conduct evaluation of technical institutions or programmes on the basis of guidelines, norms and standards specified by it. NBA is dedicated to building a technical education system, as vendors of human resources that will match the national goals of growth by competence, contributions to economy through competitiveness and compatibility to societal development. Significance of accreditation and accreditation policy has been well described in Accreditation Manual for Pharmacy UG programmes by NBA. Briefly, significance of accreditation depending on following parameters:

· Find weakness and suggestion for improvement

· Enhance the quality of programme

· Update the teaching and learning process,

· Faculty and student’s development.

Salient features of accreditation:

· To assist in technical education in identifying those institutions and their specific programmes which meet the norms, standards and other quality indicators specified from time to time.

· To provide guidelines to the technical institutions for the desirable upgradation of existing programmes and for the development of new programmes.

· NBA aims to recognize and acknowledge the value addition in transforming the admitted raw student into a capable pharmacist having sound knowledge of fundamentals and acceptable level of professional and personal competence for ready employability in responsible assignments.

· The programme may be granted accreditation for a maximum period of 5 years.

New accreditation process includes:

Assessment

Assessment is one or more processes, carried out by the institutions that identify, collect and prepare data to evaluate the achievement of the PEOs and POs.

Evaluation

Evaluation is one of more process, done by the evaluation team for interpreting the data and evidence accumulated through assessment objectives. Evaluation Determines the extent to which PEOs or POs are being achieved, and results in decisions and actions to improve the programme.

Mapping

Mapping is the process of representing, preferably in a matrix form, the correlation among the parameters. It may be done for one to many, many to one and many to many parameters.

Crieteria discription:

Vision, Mission and Programme Educational Objectives (PEOs):

Vision:

To become a Centre of Excellence comparable to the best in the world for producing professionals who shall be leaders in technology innovation, entrepreneurship and management.

Mission:

· To develop technologies in pharmacy.

· To provide state of the art teaching learning process and R&D environment.

Programme Educational Objectives (PEOs):

PEOs being new concept in the current accreditation process.

Following points should be considered regarding PEOs -

· PEOs should be assessable and realistic within the context of the committed resources.

· A comprehensive list of various stake-holders of the programme involved in the process of defining and redefining PEOs should be provided.

Factors considered while designing PEOs:

· Mission of the Institute.

· PEOs should be based on the need of the stake-holders

· All stake holders should participate in the process of framing the PEOs.

· The number of PEOs should be manageable

· PEOs should not be too narrow and similar to the POs.

· PEOs should be reviewed periodically.

· PEOs. Necessary documentation should be maintained.

Programme Outcomes (POs):

Programme Outcomes (POs) describe what students should know and be able to do at the end of the programme. They are to be in line with the graduate attributes of NBA. POs are to be specific, measurable and achievable. POs transform the PEOs into specific student performance and behaviours that demonstrate student learning and skill development

Following are the point identified by the NBA for Pharmacy programme -

· Pharmacy knowledge

· Thinking abilities

· Planning abilities

· Leadership skills

· Professional identity

· The Pharmacist and society

· Environment and sustainability

· Ethics

· Communications

· Modern tool usage

· Lifelong learning

Course Outcomes:

Course Outcomes (COs) are clear statements of what a student should be able to demonstrate upon completion of a course. They should be assessable and measurable knowledge, skills, abilities or attitudes that students attain by the end of the course.

Programme Curriculum:

The following points are included in programme Curriculum-

· Describe the Structure of the Curriculum.

· Justify how the curricular structure helps for the attainment of the POs and the PEOs.

· Indicate interaction with R&D organisation.

· Illustrate the process used to identify the curricular gaps for the attainment of POs.

· Indicate the content (beyond syllabus) imparted for the attainment of COs/POs.

· Course Syllabi.

§ Department, course number, and title of course

§ Designation as a required or elective course

§ Pre-requisites

§ Contact hours and type of course (lecture, tutorial, seminar, project etc.)

§ Course Assessment methods (both continuous and semester-end assessment)

§ Course outcomes

§ Topics covered

§ Text books, and/or reference material

Student's Performance in the Programme:

Students admitted to the programme should be capable of achieving the POs. the policies and procedure for admission should be transparent. It included the information like

· Admission intake in the programme

§ Number of seats filled through the admission procedure approved by the university

§ Quality of students as judged from their complete graduation records.

§ Number of students admitted having a valid GATE score/PG entrance of state (5) Assessment = 10´ (Average percentage of students admitted with valid GATE score/PG entrance of state)

· Success Rate

· Academic Performance

· Placement and Higher Studies

· Professional Activities

§ Membership in Professional societies / chapters and organising pharmacy events

§ Participation and their outcomes in international/national events

§ Publication and awards in international/national events

§ Entrepreneurship initiatives, and innovations

Faculty Contributions^3,5-6:

Adequate number of qualified faculty should be available. The faculty must be actively involved in research and development (R&D). They should be engaged in continuous improvement of PEOs and POs. The following points must be considered during these criteria study.

· Student Faculty Ratio

· Faculty strength in PG programme

· Faculty Qualifications

· Faculty Competencies correlation to Programme Curriculum

· Faculty as participants/resource persons in faculty development/training activities

· Faculty Retention

· Faculty Research Publications

· Faculty Intellectual Property Rights

· Funded R&D Projects and Consultancy (FRDC) Work

· Faculty Interaction with Outside World

Facilities and technical support:

The details of infrastructure facilities including classrooms, seminar halls, conference halls, faculty rooms, laboratories, animal house, museum, medicinal plant garden needs to be provided under this heading. Details about instruments, equipment’s and their relevance to curriculum.

Teaching-learning process:

In these criteria includes the teaching process like lecture, tutorial, seminar, workshops, conferences, poster presentation, student mentoring, student feedback, parents feedback, Self-study, carrier fare, training and placements for students, Entrepreneurship development programme and other extra activities for students.

Governance, institutional support and financial resources:

It includes the budget planning and also includes the structure of institute. The program must possess financial resources to fulfil its mission and POs. it also focus on governance and transparency, public accounting for institution as well as program be indicated.

Continuous improvement:

It includes the documented review on PEOs, POs and Cos and other eight criteria. The continuous improvement in the PEOs and POs need to be validated with proper Documentation. In this there is the growth of institute continuously.

STEPS INVOLVED IN NBA PROCESS.⁴:

a. Online registration process

b. Applying for accreditation

c. On site visit of evaluation team to the institute

d. Consideration of evaluation report by Evaluation Accreditation Committee

e. Issuance of accreditation status

f. Appeal against the accreditation status

CONCLUSION:

The process of accreditation is being reviewed periodically to make it reach the new global standards, so that many of the institutions will be accredited in India. The system of accreditation should be continuously reviewed to enhance its validity, reliability and usability and bring it as par with international standards. The article focus on different criteria for NBA like Programme Education Outcomes, Programme Outcomes, Student's Performance in the Programme, Faculty Contributions, Facilities and technical support, Teaching-learning process, Governance, institutional support and financial resources. It is also emphasis on pharmacy education. It elaborate the concept of today need of accredited institutes.

REFERENCES:

1. Manual for NBA Accreditation (2004). [Online] Available: http://www.nba-aicte.ernet.in/accre/content.pdf.

2. IEEE Position Paper on Accreditation of Academic Programs in Engineering, Computing and Technology (2007). [Online].Available: http://www.ieee.org/ position_statements.html.

3. R Krishna Murthy. Accreditation - the role of Universities, AICTE and NBA. Proceedings of First World Summit on Accreditation; 2012 Mar. 25-29; New Delhi, India. New Delhi: NBA; 2012.

4. Sanjaya Mishra. Quality Assurance in Higher Education An introduction. Bangalore: National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) and Commonwealth of Learning (COL); 2006 National Board of Accreditation (NBA). Accreditation manual for Pharmacy UG programmes. New Delhi: NBA; 2013.

5. D. Brahadeeswaran, M.A. Abdul Hakeem. A Review of NBA's Accreditation Criteria for Bachelor's Degree Programmes in Engineering. J. Engg. Sc. Mgmt. Ed. 2012; 5(2):475-9

6. B. S. Sonde, “Accreditation of Engineering Education Programmes in India: Issues and Concerns”, Contemporary Issues in Engineering Education, Macmillan Publishers India Ltd., pp. 16-25, 2008.

Received on 01.08.2018 Modified on 20.08.2018

Res. J. Pharma. Dosage Forms and Tech.2019; 11(1):35-38.

DOI: 10.5958/0975-4377.2019.00005.3