Developing a Service Quality Framework for a Special Type of Course

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of service quality measurement and evaluation in higher education and stresses the need to develop sound measures for special types of courses. During these courses students carry out project works under special circumstances and with special characteristics compared to "ordinary" courses where traditional course evaluation methods have been applied for a long time. The primary aim of the paper is to support the need to develop valid, reliable and replicable measures of service quality in case of these courses. Therefore, a questionnaire was designed for these courses to collect students' perceptions. The results are reported by using an importance-performance analysis supplemented by the draw of statistical conclusions. The presented methodology allows the identification of importance-performance gaps and supports the assessment of quality improvement programs.