As a result of the E-TRAIN project a handbook for the training of panel members for external QA procedures has been published. The handbook has been written by Dr Gillian King.
This handbook gives practical guidelines on how to organize effective training sessions for panel members. All steps of the training process are covered in the handbook, from the planning phase up to the necessary evaluation of the delivered trainings. It is believed that both quality assurance agencies and higher education institutions, and also the individual experts, can profit from its reading. The Handbook can be downloaded Handbook for the training of panel members.
Handbook for the Training of Panel Members for External Quality Assurance Procedures
Foreword
The trust building potential of external quality assurance (QA) procedures depends upon the quality and professionalism of the involved external experts. In an increasingly internationalized higher education area independent, highly competent and intercultural aware experts are urgently needed in order to guarantee fair decision making and to benefit higher education institutions in all types of external QA procedures. The European Consortium for Accreditation in Higher education (ECA) has acknowledged the vital role of the expert panel members ever since its inception (Code of good practice, 2004 and Guidelines for the selection of external expert panel members, 2007). After careful review of the training practices of its members agencies, ECA in 2010 launched its EU funded “E-TRAIN” project with the goal to train and to share a community of knowledgeable and internationally experienced experts in the domain of external QA in higher education. Based on the collection of international good practices ECA successfully offered pilot trainings to experts and established a „train the trainer“-programme.
The E-TRAIN project is strictly output-oriented and offers guides to good practices, a training handbook, an electronic training portal for experts, standardised expert portfolios and a European Expert Exchange Platform which provides access to a searchable database of experts.
This handbook gives practical guidelines on how to organize effective training sessions for panel members. All steps of the training process are covered in the handbook, from the planning phase up to the necessary evaluation of the delivered trainings. It is believed that both quality assurance agencies and higher education institutions, and also the individual experts, can profit from its reading.
Today all relevant higher education stakeholder groups of the European Higher Education Area acknowledge the need for well trained, professionally acting and internationally competent expert panellists. The E-TRAIN project has powerfully contributed to the establishment of such a community of experts and is clearly strengthening the European dimension in quality assurance. Based on the success of its operations ECA will – together with its partners – continue its efforts to organise regular trainings in order to assure the required capabilities and capacities of their external experts and to promote consistency of decisions in external quality assurance.
We hope you will find this handbook interesting and enjoyable. Additional information about this project is provided on our website (http://www.ecaconsortium.net). Please feel free at any time to address your questions and comments also directly to our secretariat. Rolf Heusser, Chairman of ECA The Hague, The Netherlands.
1. Introduction
This guidance is aimed at any person who will be delivering training to members of expert panels. The term ‘panel member’ is used to refer to any person who will be carrying out a panel task, such as a review or audit or accreditation activity for a quality assurance agency (QA agency). In some agencies or countries those persons are referred to as ‘experts’, ‘reviewers’, ‘auditors’, ‘review/audit secretary’, etc. This handbook uses the term ‘panel members’ for all such people.
This handbook refers to ‘training event’: this is intended to include all kinds of training sessions whether they last 3 hours or 3 days. This handbook is not concerned with training that is primarily carried out online or remotely. It is concerned with training that is primarily delivered to participants face-to-face. A face-to-face event, however brief, has uses other than just passing on knowledge or acquisition of skills. It enables the trainer (who will usually be a staff member of a quality assurance or accreditation agency) to get to know the panel members who will be carrying out work for the agency in the future. It also helps participants who may work together in the future, to meet and get to know each other a little. This will help to build a community of practice amongst the panel members, which in turn will help them to support and learn from each other. Meeting face-to-face will give the trainer an opportunity to model the values and expectations of the quality assurance agency and encourage a professional attitude amongst panel members.
The guidance for planning a training event given below should be helpful whatever the length of the training, whoever the participants are, and whatever the objectives of the training are. The general principles outlined below will still apply. The guidance is divided into 5 sections: deciding on the overall aim of training; deciding on content, session aims and learning outcomes; looking at the needs of participants; delivering the training; ensuring that the training is effective. A stage-by-stage summary of the main stages of the guidance may be found in the checklist in
Annex 1: Stage by stage checklist of main points for training.
In each section of the guidance the trainer will be encouraged to ask some simple questions. It is important that the trainer knows the answers to these questions so that the training prepared is appropriate, relevant and effective.
There is also a list of publications and websites in Annex 2: References which you might find useful if you need more information or ideas. MORE...
6. How to ensure that training has been effective
The trainer needs to ask him/herself the questions: “How do I plan the training so that it helps participants to retain the material? How do I get feedback on the training and whether it has helped participants in their panel work?”
6.1. Retention
We know that much of the knowledge and skills learned on a training event is lost very quickly unless it is put into use straightaway on a day-to-day basis. We noted in section 4.1. Knowing your participants
• Make sure the design of training matches the needs that you and your organisation have identified. In this way you should be able to ensure that there will be opportunities for participants to use the knowledge and skills acquired on the training event, even though these might be some time in the future
that, for many of our participants, there may be a significant gap between training and carrying out panel work. If training is to be effective it has to be retained long enough to be taken into the workplace or real-life situation – in our case, into the panel situation. We can maximise the chances of this in various ways:
• Make sure that anyone from your organisation who will be working with your panel members also knows what the training has included, and is prepared to coach panel members when they carry out panel work to help them to put skills and knowledge into practice. It is very useful if members of your organisation can attend at least one training event
• Make sure that the training includes practical examples which reflect the actual work of the panel member. These can be descriptions of the work, case studies, or practice activities such as mock meetings. Introducing activities into the training which encourage ‘doing’, rather than just ‘listening’ or ‘speaking’, also encourages retention of the material
• If you have the time during the training event try to encourage participants to discover the principles involved in panel work for themselves. We tend to remember the knowledge that we have discovered for ourselves better than things we are simply told. You could use case-studies for problem-based learning activities, or give small groups open-ended questions or problems to discuss. Remember to share the solutions that individuals or groups discover with the whole group after the exercise
• Give participants an aide-mémoire of the process that they will be using as a panel member. This could take the form of a guide to procedure (just bullet-points or headlines) which you could refer to during the training. It can then be used by participants during their panel work to ‘jog their memory’ of the main points that they learned on training
• When you design hand-outs or other training materials for the participants think about how the participant will use them after the training and try to ensure that they will still be comprehensible and useful even after the training has finished. If the training is changed after you deliver it for the first time you will need to remember to update those who have already had the training. If it is possible, it might be a good idea to put the training materials on a part of your organisation’s website dedicated to panel members. Then you will be able to update training materials easily.
• Encourage action planning on the part of participants. It was noted above (in section 3.4.2. Reflection, summary of the day, action planning) that it is a good idea to allow time in the training event for participants to reflect on their learning and put together some action points to be started when they return home. These action points will give a trigger for the participant to keep thinking about the training event, and to carry on with their learning after the training until they have a chance to carry out some panel work. It is also useful if the new panel member is given the opportunity to reflect after the first panel work, and see whether there are any new action points to consider (see section 6.3 Continued engagement with participants
• Encourage follow-up between participants, and if you have the time, with yourself. This could be through email, online, get-togethers, support groups, etc. This will help to build up a community of panel members who can support each other (see section 6.3 Continued engagement with participants).
• If you can, use past participants as mentors. Once a panel member has been trained and has carried out some panel activity he/she may be prepared to mentor new panel members. The mentoring relationship may have many forms so you will want to put in writing what the mentor is expected to do. It may simply involve being available should the new panel member wish to email with a question. Or it could include meeting and discussing the new panel member’s work.
6.2. Evaluation
It is no good encouraging your participants to retain what they have learned on the programme if what you have delivered is not relevant to the learning outcomes, or has not been delivered in a way that helps them to learn. So you need to find out how effective the training has been and, if it has not worked as well as you wanted, to change some aspects of it. This is the process of evaluation and it is a very important part of the overall training cycle (see the diagram in Annex 7: The training cycle).
There are different options for carrying out evaluation and gathering feedback.
• Spot checks during the training: you can find out how participants are doing on the training event by asking questions now and again. This method is probably most helpful during a longer training event where participants have time to settle down and start learning, and where the learning outcomes are build upon each other sequentially. You could ask general questions like ‘What have you learned so far?’ or more detailed ones about the content of the programme, like ‘Can you explain the three main sections of the Qualifications Framework?’. Participants could write down their answers quickly so that you could gather them in for analysis. Simply observing the participants will also give you an idea of whether they are understanding what is going on and are finding the training material intelligible.
• Give out a ‘Reactionnaire’ straight after the training has finished. As the name implies this kind of evaluation instrument gathers the participants’ reaction to the training. It can be short or detailed, and ask a few questions or many. You could use this kind of questionnaire to ask participants whether the aims of the training have been met. To do that you would need to make sure that you had set the aims of the training, and then decide what questions you would ask the participants to try to establish whether your aims have been met. An example is given in Annex 8: Example of a training ‘Reactionnaire’.
• Evaluation of key learning outcomes: this is a more sophisticated kind of evaluation questionnaire. It can ask all the questions in a Reactionnaire, but it concentrates on asking the participants whether they think they have been able to meet the learning outcomes of the training. This kind of evaluation demands (a) that you have set learning outcomes; and (b) that the participants know what they are.
• Group discussion: if you have some time after the training event has ended and some of your participants can stay around for an hour you could run a group discussion on how the training went. You could ask the same questions as in the Reactionnaire or learning outcome questionnaire, but having the group of people in the room means that you can drill down into their responses and get more information about why aspects of the training worked well, and why some did not. Or you could focus on the aspects of the training that you personally were less confident about. Remember though that the opinions expressed by the small group may not be completely representative of the whole group of participants.
• Delayed questionnaire: it can be very useful to give participants a questionnaire some time after the training (and ideally after they have carried out some panel work) to ask whether the training was appropriate for their panel task and whether they have been able to put the training to use. This can be in addition to a Reactionnaire and/or Evaluation of learning outcomes, depending on how much time and money you can spend on evaluation. It might make more sense to invest in detailed evaluation at the start of a training cycle, so that you can be sure that the training is meeting its aims, and then perhaps reduce evaluation, or use different evaluation instruments, later on.
• Pre-training questionnaire: the delayed questionnaire could be combined with a pre-training questionnaire which asks the participants for their perception of how well prepared they are for panel work. They can then be asked the same questions after training and/or after their first panel work to see whether they feel more confident and better prepared for their work. If they do not, then something is not working and you need to think again about the learning outcomes of the training.
These kinds of questionnaires are designed to help with your own developmental needs and with the development of the training event. They will provide useful information for you but may not be sophisticated enough for other purposes, such as demonstrating a business case, or applying for funding. If you need sophisticated or statistical information you may need to consult a professional who can devise evaluation methods for you.
If you are tempted to think that evaluation is a waste of time, remember that it will actually save you time and effort in the future. If you have chosen your learning outcomes carefully, and delivered training effectively, this means that you will produce panel members who know the process, adhere to that process, behave professionally and produce reports on time. If this is not happening the training is a waste of time and money, and your life will be harder not easier. So you need to find out whether your training is working, and if it is not, why not.
6.3. Continued engagement with participants
In the last section we noted that giving participants the opportunity to keep in contact after the training was one of the ways you could increase retention of the training material and encourage participants to put the training into action when they carry out panel work. In this way participants can continue to ask questions about panel work and increase their knowledge of the processes that they will be working in. They can also swap ideas for dealing with difficult situations. They can mentor or buddy one another to develop good practice in panel activities. In this way they will build up a community of panel members who will help to improve not only their own performances but also increase the consistency with which panel activities are carried out.
The most obvious way that you can facilitate this activity is providing an online facility, like a ‚chat room’, or by enabling participants to keep in email contact with each other. Unless you have made this a condition of the training, you should make sure that all participants are happy about having personal details such as email addresses circulated to everyone else. You should also make it clear what the rules for communication are, and whether anyone will moderate the chat room or emails.
If you have the resources, offering refresher training, annual meetings, or workshops are very good ways of keeping your community of panel members together and will give you opportunities to update them on any changes to the panel processes. Of course, providing these activities is expensive and panel members may not have the time to attend, so you might choose to do this updating using a website. Another alternative is to set aside a small amount of time before a panel activity (that is, a review, accreditation event, etc.) to update and refresh panel members’ knowledge before they start a new piece of panel work.
You can also encourage new panel members to reflect on their first panel event and draw up any action points that they feel they should address. If you have the resources, it would be good for a member of your agency to go through the action points with the new panel member to ensure that they can be dealt with successfully – perhaps with a mentor, or through using information on your website.
If a member of your agency is present with the panel team in its panel work, then you might be able to give a new panel member immediate feedback on their first panel activity. If you do this, then ideally you should have some criteria against which to give feedback. Some examples might be: was written work completed before the deadline? was the panel member punctual at the panel event? did the panel member contribute to panel discussions constructively and knowledgeably? did the panel member behave in a professional way with meetings with the institution? Work out what you want your panel member to do, and how you want them to behave. Then draw up your feedback criteria to match.
In order to be most effective training should not end when the last participant leaves the training room. If you can encourage panel members to stay in contact with you and with each other you will help to produce a community of panel members who will not only be interested in keeping their knowledge up to date, but also help to improve panel processes, and provide a source of support for you and for each other.
The Handbook can be downloaded Handbook for the training of panel members.

HEFCE has published the outcomes of its consultation on the future direction of quality assurance in higher education (notes 1 and 2).
The outcomes have been agreed by the HEFCE Board and will come into operation from the academic year 2013-14. They form a strong and positive package which puts students at its heart, and achieves better regulation by focusing effort where it is most needed. The revised approach, which builds on existing good practice, will protect and enhance the student experience through robust and rigorous reviews of the quality assurance of teaching and learning in universities and colleges, and the standards of their awards. Students will continue to play a key role, as central partners in the quality assurance and enhancement of their higher education experience.
Future institutional reviews will be more integrated, and more closely tailored to individual institutional circumstances. There will no longer be a mid-cycle review, and institutions with a longer track record of assuring their quality and standards will be reviewed every six years (note 3). HEFCE will formally ask the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) to adopt the new approach, and the QAA will consult on implementing it in time for the 2013-14 academic year.
Minister for Universities, David Willetts, said:

'The sector has responded positively to HEFCE's consultation. These proposals cut the burden of red tape on our universities. As a result we will have a system that will focus the Quality Assurance Agency’s effort where it will have most impact, balancing better regulation with protecting the interests of students and supporting the enhancement of quality across the sector.'

HEFCE Chief Executive Sir Alan Langlands said:

‘Quality assurance is not simply about meeting a set of minimum standards. It drives improvement, dissemination of best practice and the achievement of excellence.
‘This is a balanced package of measures which recognises the crucial importance of student involvement in quality assurance and enhancement activities.
‘It will also result in better regulation through varying the frequency, nature and intensity of review.’

Notes

1. The publication is available on the HEFCE web-site. There were over 130 responses to the consultation. Over three-quarters of respondents supported the three key principles HEFCE had identified as essential to the risk-based approach:

• the retention of a universal system for higher education which continues to promote enhancement
• an approach which is robust and rigorous, enabling HEFCE to carry out its statutory duty to secure assessments of quality for higher education providers that have access to public funding
• an approach which enables students to continue to play a prominent role in assessing their own academic experiences.

There was also wide cross-sector support for a range of other proposals:

• to reduce unnecessary burden and achieve better regulation, targeting the QAA’s efforts where they are most needed
• to tailor external review to the individual circumstances of providers by modifying the frequency, nature and intensity of review
• to ensure transparency, for example through the application of clear criteria and the publication on the QAA website of a rolling programme of reviews. 

2. The consultation followed a commitment in the Government’s higher education white paper, ‘Students at the heart of the system’, and subsequent technical consultation, to introduce ‘a risk-based quality assurance regime that focuses regulatory effort where it will have most impact’ and which would give greater prominence to the interests of students. The Government asked HEFCE ‘to consult on the criteria against which overall risk should be assessed and the frequency of review, with a view to achieving very substantial deregulatory change for institutions that can demonstrate low risk’. HEFCE was also asked to consult on ‘a set of ad hoc triggers which would be central to a risk-based approach to quality assurance’. (White paper, paragraph 3.20)
3. HEFCE is asking the QAA to discontinue any form of mid-cycle review given that there are already safeguards in place, such as the QAA’s Concerns Scheme, for institutions which have continuing issues to address between reviews. HEFCE is also asking the QAA to review those providers with a shorter track record of assuring quality and standards at a more frequent interval of four years. A small number of respondents to the consultation called for consideration of a ten-year review cycle for institutions with a longer track record of assuring their quality and standards, but HEFCE has concluded that the arguments in support of the student interest, continuous enhancement, safeguarding of the international reputation of UK higher education, and regular assessment under our statutory duty outweigh the calls for any longer interval.

La Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, tiene el agrado de darle la bienvenida al sitio web del evento “Jornadas Internacionales para la Gestión de la Calidad Educativa” a realizarse los días 26, 27 y 28 de septiembre de 2012 en la blanca ciudad de Mérida, Yucatán, México.
Este evento permitirá reunir en un solo espacio a expertos internacionales y nacionales en la gestión de la calidad educativa con intención de fomentar y promover la mejora continua.
Se contará con empresas consultoras y organismos encargados de la certificación de la calidad educativa, así como también con los titulares y responsables a nivel nacional de las instancias encargadas de fomentar, fortalecer y acreditar la calidad educativa en las Instituciones y sus programas académicos de nivel Medio Superior y Superior.
Esperamos contar con su asistencia a este gran evento para poder compartir experiencias y situaciones actuales que pueden ayudar a mejorar la calidad de la educación en la Instituciones de Educación Media Superior y Superior.
Objetivo
Promover una cultura de mejora continua en instituciones educativas públicas y privadas, mediante la presentación de herramientas de vanguardia y experiencias por parte de expertos en el diseño, desarrollo, implementación y mantenimiento de los sistemas de gestión de la calidad, a fin de fortalecer y mejorar la calidad de los servicios de la Educación Media Superior y Superior.

La direction des relations européennes et internationales et de la coopération (DREIC), du ministère de l’enseignement supérieur et de la recherche et du ministère de l’éducation nationale, a organisé, en partenariat avec le centre international d’études pédagogiques (CIEP), la quatrième édition du séminaire Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), les 11 et 12 octobre 2012 à Sèvres.
Consacré à l’assurance qualité dans l’enseignement supérieur, le séminaire a permis de contribuer à la compréhension et la reconnaissance mutuelle des pratiques d'assurance qualité et d'étudier les possibilités de coopération entre les deux régions.
La première journée s’est articulée en quatre ateliers thématiques:

• Reconnaissance des agences d'assurance qualité: impact de l'assurance qualité dans l'enseignement supérieur, équilibre entre auto-évaluation et évaluation externe;
• Définitions et pratiques d'assurance qualité en Asie et en Europe: différences et convergences des systèmes nationaux;
• Renforcement des concepts d'assurance qualité: retour d’expériences de la diversité des approches et des méthodes;
• Elaboration du programme pilote ASEM Curriculum Development et prise en compte du retour d’expériences des programmes Erasmus Mundus. Animés par Patricia Pol, responsable des affaires européennes et internationales de l’AERES, les échanges ont porté sur la faisabilité et le périmètre d’un programme pilote de formation conjointe dans l’espace ASEM.

La seconde journée s’est déroulée en une session plénière, destinée à partager les travaux de la veille et à constituer des recommandations pour la prochaine réunion Asie-Europe des Ministres de l'éducation en Malaisie, en 2013.
Constatant la très grande motivation des participants à poursuivre le dialogue, Didier Houssin, président de l’AERES, a conclu la session sur quelques grandes orientations:

• La nécessité de partager une compréhension et un langage communs sur les questions de qualité, fortement ancrées dans des contextes nationaux;
• le renforcement des liens entre les réseaux European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) et Asia Pacific Quality Network (APQN);
• le diagnostic des programmes existants et le soutien au développement de nouveaux projets, notamment de programmes de formation conjoints sur des problématiques touchant l’assurance qualité communes à l’espace ASEM.

En savoir plus sur le dialogue Asie-Europe (ASEM) :
Lancé en 1996 au sommet des chefs d’Etats à Bangkok (Thaïlande), l’ASEM répondait au besoin de renforcer le dialogue entre l’Asie et l’Europe sur des questions politiques, économiques et culturelles. Il réunit les 27 États membres de l'Union européenne, la Commission européenne, 19 pays d'Asie et le secrétariat de l'Association des Nations de l’Asie du Sud-Est (ASEAN). Accédez au site internet de l’ASEM.

After 5 years of hosting the INQAAHE Secretariat by NVAO the contract between INQAAHE and NVAO will come to an end on 30 June 2013. Therefore, the INQAAHE Board is seeking expressions of interest to host the Secretariat from July 2013 to December 2015. The contract between INQAAHE and the hosting agency may be prolonged for a second term until June 2018.
If you are interested in hosting the INQAAHE secretariat from July 2013, please let us know!
INQAAHE member agencies are invited to express their interest in hosting the INQAAHE Secretariat by 1 December 2012 by sending an expression of interest to the secretariat (secretariat@inqaahe.org). In the attachments you will find the details of the Call for expressions, as well as the Secretariat-specifications.
Call for EOI to host the INQAAHE Secretariat. Secretariat-specifications.

Overview
EQAR has been founded by ENQA, ESU, EUA and EURASHE, the European representative bodies of quality assurance agencies, students, universities and other higher education institutions, respectively, to increase the transparency of quality assurance in higher education across Europe. EQAR will publish and manage a register of quality assurance agencies that substantially comply with the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance (ESG) to provide the public with clear and reliable information on quality assurance agencies operating in Europe. The register will be web-based and freely accessible.
The Register is expected to:
    promote student mobility by providing a basis for the increase of trust among higher education institutions;
    reduce opportunities for “accreditation mills” to gain credibility;
    provide a basis for governments to authorise higher education institutions to choose any agency from the Register, if that is compatible with national arrangements;
    provide a means for higher education institutions to choose between different agencies, if that is compatible with national arrangements;
    serve as an instrument to improve the quality of agencies and to promote mutual trust among them.
Criteria
All agencies which comply substantially with the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance (ESG) can be admitted to the Register. Substantial compliance with the European Standards and Guidelines is to be evidenced through an external review by independent experts. Such a review is coordinated either by a national authority or another organisation that is independent from the quality assurance agency under review. Full ENQA membership, being also based on substantial compliance with the ESG, will normally constitute satisfactory evidence for inclusion in the Register. See Application: Requirements for further information.

QUARES : à l’école de la qualité
Comme chaque année depuis 10 ans, l’association QUARES (Qualité en Recherche et en l’Enseignement Supérieur) a tenu  son école dans les locaux de l’Institut Agronomique Méditerranéen, à Montpellier, du 11 au 14 septembre dernier.
QuaRES fédère un réseau regroupant des qualiticiens, chercheurs, enseignants-chercheurs, ingénieurs et techniciens des organismes de recherche et d’enseignement supérieur, intéressés par l’application de la démarche qualité aux processus de recherche et d’enseignement supérieur.
A l’origine principalement orientée vers la recherche, QuaRES en conserve l’empreinte : sur 150 participants, on comptait cette année, deux universités et quelques écoles d’ingénieurs,  les EPST constituant l’essentiel de l’assistance. Malgré une volonté affichée de  s’adresser à elles, l’association rencontre encore un succès modeste auprès des universités qui ne la connaissent que très peu.
Ce décalage persiste alors que plusieurs indices montrent que les universités ont beaucoup progressé en matière de politique ou de démarche qualité depuis l’accession à l’autonomie. Alors comment expliquer cet apparent désintérêt ? Outre, peut être, un défaut de communication, il faut en rechercher aussi les causes dans la conception de la qualité telle qu’elle apparaît au travers des exemples mis en avant. QuaRES promeut essentiellement une approche normative qui s’articule autour de la certification. La mise sous normes ISO est sans doute plus adaptée aux organismes de recherche et aux unités qui les composent, ainsi qu’aux écoles d’ingénieurs dont le marché exige qu’elles se plient à ce type de démarche, qu’aux universités, corps composites et complexes qui peuvent difficilement s’accommoder d’une approche univoque.
La qualité : un outil de pilotage stratégique
C’est ce qu’a montré, dans son intervention, Martial Delignon, premier vice-président de l’université de Lorraine,  mettant en relief la variété des dispositifs concourant à la politique qualité dont la certification ne constitue que l’un des modes, rappelant aussi que la norme ISO et qu’un certain vocabulaire de la qualité font encore peur.
Comment s’abstraire en effet du jargon et de la technique pour donner aux responsables universitaires les moyens de s’approprier la qualité comme un outil de pilotage stratégique? C’est l’un des chantiers que devrait mener le Comité qualité de la CPU dans les mois à venir.
QuaRES est l’un des –trop peu nombreux- lieux où l’on débat des questions de qualité; néanmoins il n’est pas certain que l’association réponde tout à fait aux besoins spécifiques des universités en la matière. La nécessité d’un réseau des référents qualité, rassemblant les vice-présidents et les responsables administratifs, n’en est que plus manifeste. Le lancement du réseau, par la CPU, devrait être effectif dès le début du mois de décembre.

The Austrian Agency for Quality Assurance (AQA) is an independent institution for quality assurance, evaluation and certification for the entire higher education sector.
AQA develops and conducts quality assurance procedures in accordance with national and European standards.
AQA contributes with international expertise and know–how to the quality development of higher education institutions.
A new Federal Act for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (Hochschul-Qualitätssicherungsgesetz), coming into force by 1st March 2012, sets a common frame for quality assurance in all sectors of higher education in Austria (public universities, universities of applied sciences, private universities). Part of the new law is the establishment of the trans-sectoral "Agency for Quality Assurance and Accreditation Austria" by the 1st of March 2012. The new agency will unify the functions of AQA, FH Council and Accreditation Council for the private universities.
AQA will operate until 2013 and progressively integrate its activities into the new agency. AQA staff will take care of the current procedures in the proven manner and AQA meet all of its obligations.
Please contact us for any questions regarding the reorganisation.
ATTENTION: We moved to new office!
Our new contact details from 16.7.2012:
AQ Austria
Renngasse 5, 1010 Vienna
Tel: +43-1-532 02 20-0, Fax: -99
All mail adresses stay active.