The training workshops were organised in response to EUA’s recent work which has shown that those in charge of managing quality at universities feel the need for further capacity building in how to incentivise all stakeholders to take on the responsibility for quality. The workshops sought to address this need by presenting findings from EUA’s studies on quality culture in Europe, giving an insight into current European-level trends in quality assurance, presenting case studies from the host countries, providing a forum for an open exchange of experiences and building connections among colleagues from different countries.

In the training workshops, participants tackled topics such as: how to build effective communication structures for making students an active partner in quality culture? How to engage staff in the shared goal of enhancing quality? How to use the results of QA processes efficiently and effectively? How to implement student surveys? How to devise alternative approaches to evaluation?

The presentations from plenary sessions and summaries of working group discussions from all three workshops are now available here.

As a follow-up to these workshops, EUA in partnership with the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) will organise a workshop for the staff of the European quality assurance agencies, which will take place in Brussels from 12 to 13 September. The workshop will examine the role of QA agencies in the process of building and fostering quality culture in higher education institutions through the external QA procedures which they design and carry out, while utilising experiences and ideas collected through the three workshops for quality managers at universities.

The workshops were organised in the framework of the project "Promoting quality culture in higher education institutions" (PQC), which EUA is implementing in partnership with the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA), the University of Duisburg-Essen, the University of Lisbon and the University of Zagreb. The project was made possible with the financial support of the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union.

Source: EUA