E-TRAIN

Why is quality assurance important?

In 1999, signing the Bologna Declaration started the Bologna Process. The process has had three overarching goals from the start: 

• introduction of the bachelor’s/master’s/doctorate system; 
• recognition of qualifications and periods of study; and 
• quality assurance (QA) of higher education.

In light of the latter, in 2003, the ministers involved in the Bologna Process asked the European Network for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) to develop “an agreed set of standards, procedures and guidelines on quality assurance” and to “explore ways of ensuring an adequate peer review system for quality assurance and/or accreditation agencies or bodies”. Involvement of many stakeholders resulted in the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG).

The importance of experts in QA

The part of that guide that deals with the external QA process insists that “the experts undertaking the external quality assurance activity have appropriate skills” (p. 21). A few years later, in 2007, in the fifth report in its Trends series* , the European University Association (EUA) indicated that this is still an area of concern.

One of the conclusions in the report was that “the expert pool in any single country that could be used to evaluate the quality of programmes is extremely limited, and this is clearly an issue where regional cooperation would seem to offer a solution” (p. 71). So, quality assurance is important for the European Higher Education Area: it is evident that those involved in the process have the proper skills, and that there are not enough of them.

E-TRAIN

E-TRAIN tries to fill these gaps. The ECA-project aims to train experts in quality assurance procedures, both from agencies and from institutions (peers), so that they are “knowledgeable and internationally experienced”.

And these experts will be shared: the project develops a programme that allows to share experts among quality assurance agencies in Europe. One of the ways to accomplish this, is to set up a database providing easy access for quality assurance agencies to the portfolios of panel members.

Conference

Several speakers crossed the stage. They addressed topics from their own perspective. For instance, the view of a QA experts trainee. He described himself as an “untypical, but hopefully qualified trainee”, and admitted not to have extremely high expectations. He was glad to be able to report that the training by far exceeded his expectations. He appreciated it to be on the trainee-side this time, and to learn from other trainers, what they do and think.

Another important topic was that of intercultural awareness. Should it play a major role in QA procedures? It seems so. One of the trainers from the Dutch-Flemish Accreditation Organisation (NVAO) suggested that it is time to leave behind the idea that intercultural awareness should be a single module in training – it should be integrated in all of the programme: it is a far too important topic to discuss separately.

How about the European perception of the trained experts? According to a speaker from the E-TRAIN focus group, it is important to involve as many experts as possible: you do not want to build an elite corps that goes around Europe. Also, it is important to note that the project does not aim to replace the national training systems. The focus of evaluating should be on peers, experts in the field of the programme. And, last but not least, students should take part in the evaluation.

The speaker from EARASHE posed some interesting questions about the needs for a higher education institution to be able to comply with external reviews: which assessment and other skills do panel members need to have; how does every panel achieve those skills; how can the assessment practice be evaluated and how to achieve the right balance between mutual trust and control.

The ENQA was next, and talked about the E-TRAIN approach being complementary to their own. For instance, the ENQA approach is at a macro level, while E-TRAIN focuses more on details. The speaker also identified a few challenges: there is a risk of uniformity; diversity – so characteristic for the EHAE – might be lost. Therefore, training must pay attention to various European contexts of academic and legal traditions. At the same time, it must maintain the European dimension. A challenge.

One of the promising, technical features of the project was presented by a speaker from the NVAO. He presented the database that has information about the experts trained. Language skills, for instance, and of course type of expertise, both professionally and academically. Impressive!

The NVAO also presented the ECApedia, an online tool to combine the knowledge gained in E-TRAIN and in JOQAR,  another project of the ECA.

Conclusion

Concluding remarks were made by Karl Dittrich (NVAO). There is no doubt that it is important to train experts. An interesting question is whether trainers should be certified – a question raised in one of the workshops. Intercultural awareness appears to be important, but so are knowledge and interactive skills. Are they all equally important, or should we look for an emphasis?

What do you think? Is it necessary to train QA experts at a European level, or will national programmes suffice? Are intercultural skills important for an expert, or should the rules be open for one interpretation only, and be obeyed?

* “The Trends project series is designed to gather reliable, longitudinal information about how the European Higher Education and Research Areas are being developed across the continent” (www.eua.be).