In Australia, there has been a tendency to rely on quantitative indicators of university teaching quality. This has occurred partly because the indicators are perceived as objective and reliable and partly because they are relatively simple to gather and collate. A national project currently underway is based on the assumptions that teaching quality is multidimensional and that the identification and use of relevant indicators of teaching quality are dependent on the institutional environment. With a focus on student engagement, this paper outlines the research-based approach to developing indicators of teaching quality being taken by one Australian university participating in the national project. IntroductionEngaging and motivating university students so that they engage in their learning experiences has increasingly taken on added complexity for universities. This complexity has a number of drivers, including the escalating burdens for institutions associated with the need to supplement decreasing government funding. At the same time, accountability and scrutiny have intensified, not only from governments in relation to how public funding provided to universities is spent, but from students themselves, who are increasingly focused on ensuring they receive a quality educational experience in a market-driven environment.Efforts to ensure both value for money and the quality of higher education teaching and learning have contributed to the increasing interest in assessing teaching quality. In Australia, at the national level, there has been a tendency to rely on quantitative indicators of teaching quality, partly because they are perceived as objective and reliable and partly because they are relatively simple to gather and collate. The current high level of activity across the sector to address the quantitative indicators of the Learning and Teaching Performance Fund (LTPF) provides an example of such reliance. The LTPF is a federal government initiative, whereby a set of indicators of teaching and learning outcomes are used to determine the allocation of a large pot of money to individual universities.In order to be eligible for the fund, institutions must meet specific teaching-related hurdle requirements, including having probation and promotion practices and policies that include effectiveness as a teacher as a criterion for academics who teach, and systematic student evaluation of teaching and subjects -the results of which must inform probation *Corresponding author. Email: mdevlin@deakin.edu.au 110 M. Devlin et al. and promotion decisions for these academics (DEST, 2003). Seven indicators are then used to measure each university's performance:1. Proportion of graduates in full-time employment 2. Proportion of graduates in further part-time or full-time study 3. Graduates' perceptions of teaching 4. Graduates' perceptions on the development of generic skills 5. Graduates' overall satisfaction with their course 6. Student progress 7. Student retention (DEST, 2007).The national quantitative indicators provid...