Advancing team consistency in quality assurance through oral inquiry audits

This study explores how Oral Inquiry Audits (OIAs), an industry-inspired teaching strategy, may promote greater inter-team consistency in quality assurance (QA) process execution, with an emphasis on reducing performance variation. Prior research investigates the impact of OIAs on overall group learning and deliverable quality. Using a quasi-experimental design, software engineering students worked in teams to develop web applications for real clients and were assigned to either a control group (without OIAs) or a treatment group (with OIAs). Inter-team consistency and project deliverable quality were evaluated using both quantitative and qualitative customer feedback. Quantitative outcomes were analyzed with Mann–Whitney U tests and linear mixed models, while qualitative data underwent deductive thematic analysis. Results suggested similar mean improvements in customer satisfaction for both groups and no statistically significant group differences; however, treatment teams exhibited slightly higher average gains and lower variability in outcomes, suggesting a possible practical benefit of OIAs for fostering more consistent QA performance. Overall, OIAs appear to offer a standards-driven instructional approach that can complement existing pedagogy and may help bridge academic training and industry requirements for QA-related roles.