In the autumn of 2012, EUA launched a new project entitled ‘Promoting quality culture in higher education institutions’ (PQC), 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 PQC project will follow up and build on the recently completed EUA-led project 'Examining quality culture in higher education institutions' (EQC, 2009-2012). Research conducted within the framework of that project showed that while the majority of HEIs in Europe have built up quality assurance (QA) systems, those in charge of managing quality at universities feel the need for further capacity building in how to incentivise all stakeholders (students, academic and administrative staff) to take on the responsibility for quality, i.e. how to put Part 1 of the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG) into practice and build quality cultures.
The PQC project will fulfil this need by developing and implementing a series of trainings with a practical approach to strengthening quality cultures and providing quality managers with the opportunity to exchange experiences and build connections for future cooperation at European level. Moreover, PQC will exploit the inputs gained from the universities themselves through the trainings to devise a workshop for the staff of the European quality assurance agencies. In this way it will communicate to the agencies how they can support HEIs in developing quality cultures through the external QA procedures which they design and carry out.
Objectives.
The objectives of the project are:
• to build capacity of quality managers from HEIs across Europe to develop such internal quality assurance systems that are embedded in the institutional strategies and cultures;
• to promote European cooperation and sharing of good practices in the field;
• to raise awareness regarding the importance of internal QA and in particular quality culture;
• to advocate for the true implementation of the ESGs, i.e. the primary responsibility for quality lying with the HEIs and the responsibility to support HEIs in that process lying with the QA agencies.
Activities and timeline:
The partners will seek to achieve the project objectives through the following activities:
• presentation of the project at the European Quality Assurance Forum 2012 (November 2012);
• three two-day trainings for quality managers at European HEIs, in Zagreb, Duisburg and Lisbon (April-June 2013);
• workshop for QA agencies’ staff, raising awareness regarding the importance of internal QA and in particular quality culture (September 2013).
The call for participation in the trainings for quality managers is open to all EUA member universities from those countries eligible to take part in the Lifelong Learning Programme. If you are interested in participating, please read the full call for participation here and fill in the online application form here by 8 January 2013 at the latest.
The call for participation in the workshop for QA agencies’ staff will be announced in 2013.