Postponed - The Quality of University Education: Harmonizing Purposes, Processes and Outcomes

In the context of the diversification of higher education systems and their sustainability, and the development of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), quality assurance, quality enhancement, and the evaluation of university teaching and learning have been on the higher education policy agendas in Europe for the past twenty or so years. European transnational organizations, including the European Association of Institutions in Higher Education (EURASHE), the European University Association (EUA), the European Association for International Education (EAIE) and others have put quality high in their agendas and produced several handbooks, guidelines and policy papers, such as OECDs Enhancing Higher Education System Performance,  Benchmarking higher education system performance: Conceptual framework and data, or the publications of EUA in cooperation with ENQA (European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education), ESU (the European Students’ Union) and EURASHE.

With the aim to promote institutional quality cultures, the European policy actors encourage higher education institutions to participate in European and national-level policy discussions on internal and external quality assurance systems, and support universities to develop internal quality assurance and enhancement mechanisms. The quality of university education is also considered to be one of the most important indicators of the development of any given national higher education system.

This Summer University course intends to help universities develop their own internal quality assurance and enhancement processes – including institutional self-studies, program reviews, faculty and course evaluations, quality of management, and student services – and coordinate their efforts to ensure that the outcomes and processes of university teaching meet local and international standards simultaneously.

The course will discuss the challenges of and best practices in fulfilling the many purposes of quality assurance at the university level, such as accountability, efficiency, control, evaluation, accreditation, measurement, and quality improvement.

This one-week course will cover the following topics:

Day 1: Overview of quality in higher education

• Definitions of quality from various points of view: as excellence, as perfection or consistency, as fitness for purpose, as value for money, as value-added, and transformation and empowerment of a student
• Purposes of quality assurance, processes, and related concepts: accountability, control, evaluation, measurement, and quality improvement
• Internal and external quality assurance (differences, similarities, mechanisms)
• Enhancement-led quality assurance

Day 2: National and European policies and international standards and guidelines of quality assurance and enhancement

• Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area
• European frameworks, European transnational organizations, and agencies of quality assurance
• Quality Assurance Standards and Guidelines for Universities
• Rankings and benchmarking in higher education
• National quality assurance policies, bodies, and processes of institutional accreditation

Day 3: Institutional approaches to quality assurance

• Types of institutional procedures of quality assurance and quality enhancement: outcomes-based self-studies, internal and external program reviews, enhancement-led peer reviews
• Discussion of existing case studies: best practices, challenges, experiences

Day 4: Quality of research and teaching

• Faculty evaluation: productivity, quality of publications, services
• Evaluation of learning spaces
• Course evaluation (peer reviews, student questionnaires)
• Evaluation of teaching, and classroom practices (classroom observations, feedback mechanisms)
• Evaluation and students’ assessment

Day 5: Quality of university management, governance, services, and student support

• Quality cultures, hidden values of universities
• Aligning management practices to the quality assurance culture
• Quality management systems, strategies of quality enhancement, transparency, integrity
• Auditing

By the end of the summer course, participants will become familiar with European and international best practices of quality assurance and enhancement at the university level, and be able to design tailor-made quality assurance mechanisms for their own institutions.

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This summer course can be taken as part of the European and Transnational Governance Network (ETGN) certificate program.
To find out more about how to obtain the Joint Certificate on European and Transnational Governance, please visit https://www.ceu.edu/etgn/ .