INQAAHE Conference 2023

On May 29 – June 1, 2023 the 17th Biennial Conference ‘Roadmap to Enabling Quality in Tertiary Education 2030’ was held in Astana. It was hosted by the International Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE) and Independent Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (IQAA), Kazakhstan.

NCPA was represented by Galina Motova, Director, and Oksana Tanikova, Deputy Head of the Accreditation Office.

On May 29, during the Regional QA Networks meeting Galina Motova, APQN Vice-President, told the participants about the APQN activities and strategic goals for the development of APQN.

The INQAAHE Conference 2023 was devoted to the role of quality assurance in supporting the implementation of the UNESCO’s ‘Roadmap to 2030 Beyond Limits: New Ways to Reinvent Higher Education’, and addressing the challenges and opportunities associated with the Sustainable Development Goal of ensuring ‘inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all’ (SDG 4).

The Conference was attended by more than 180 participants from 58 countries. Sayasat Nurbek, Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Prof. Sholpan Kalanova, IQAA President, and Dr. Deb Adair, INQAAHE President, welcomed the participants.

The following issues were discussed:

- Evaluation of microcredentials: best practices of different countries;
- Flexible learning pathways (FLP) in higher education - what challenges and what solutions for external quality assurance (EQA) agencies?
- The UNESCO’s Roadmap to 2030 Beyond Limits: New Ways to Reinvent Higher Education, which expresses ‘an urgent call for renewed thinking, dialogue, and transformative action’, setting ‘signposts for co-creating more open, inclusive, equitable and collaborative higher education systems’;
- Quality assurance for digital learning environments: strengthening QA systems in higher education at regional, national, and institutional levels to ensure academic quality and student success;
- Digitalization of teaching and learning without compromising quality;
- Quality assurance of cross-border education;
- Students as drivers for change in quality assurance: from involvement to agency;
- Quality assurance in the era of artificial intelligence: challenges, opportunities and approaches.

The INQAAHE Conference 2023 endeavours to provide a platform to discuss the role that quality assurance can and must play to support progress along UNESCO’s Roadmap towards innovative, flexible and inclusive solutions to support the global agenda on widening access to tertiary education.