The European Quality Assurance Forum organized by ENQA, ESU, EUA, and EURASHE, took place last week from the 15th to the 17th of November 2018, and was hosted by the Vienna University of Economics and Business and the Agency for Quality Assurance and Accreditation Austria (AQ). The forum was attended by about five hundred participants from different parts of Europe. This year the Accreditation Agency of Curacao had the opportunity to send a representative to this Forum from its main offices in Curacao.
Ms. Abigail Rivka Eendragt, BSc
Doris Herrmann, CEO AQAS & Abigail Eendragt, Office Manager AAC (left to right)
The EQAF event started with a pre-forum session introducing the quality assurance framework of the European Higher Education Area, presented by Tia Loukkola, EUA and Maria Kelo, ENQA. The three-day conference was divided into a combination of plenary and parallel sessions, with presentations of current developments in QA and with discussions on research, policy and practice that took place in paper sessions and workshops.
A few interesting themes that were explored during the plenary and parallel sessions were QA as a system, QA and strategy, quality of administration in the Swedish higher education model and QA of e-learning.
The paper sessions and workshops explored themes like: The University Degree Accreditation System for the Regional Recognition of the Academic Quality of University Degrees in the MERCOSUR and Associate States (The ACRU-SUR System): an accreditation system for South America; Broadening the scope of QA through student participation and Internal QA policies across the full spectrum of institutional activities as well as quality assurance of assessment and good practice.
Next to the informative sessions, the EQAF provided an agreeable environment for networking and socializing. A reception followed by an official dinner at Palais Pallavicini provided further opportunities for all attendees to meet and discuss the issues at hand.
The EQAF was concluded by an invitation to next year’s EQAF in Berlin (Germany) from Caty Duykaerts, Chair, EQAF Program Committee and Maria Kelo, ENQA.
The AAC can state with confidence that attending the EQAF contributed considerably to broadening its staff’s knowledge on the latest developments in QA.
The AAC: Now is the future!
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