Author: Yanna Sumkötter

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International Day of Higher Education Disciplinary Quality Assurance

The year 2024 has been earmarked to rejuvenate and strategically reorient EASPA. As a first, but highly important measure, we invite all members and potential members as well as international guests from Asia, Africa and the United States to the EASPA/ASIIN International Day of Higher Education Disciplinary Quality Assurance in the city of Düsseldorf on April 8th 2024. The whole event with high calibre speakers and multiple contributions of EASPA members will be rounded off by an exciting social program.

The corresponding agenda can be found here. It provides for each EASPA organisation to be represented by one or more members with a short presentation. Subsequently, speeches on the following topics will lead to a fruitful discussion: Importance and Advantages of a Disciplinary Approach to Quality Assurance in Higher Education; How to best make use of an International field-specific assurance seal in “top-up” procedures: The European Chemistry Thematic Network Association and EASPA as promoters of excellent field-specific didactics in Higher Education: the Eurolecturer Academy as a new model; Revolutionary new ways of jointly offering & marketing continuous education of EASPA members; New models for “Testing Achieved Learning Outcomes: the case of medical education”  (suggestions for & by EASPA members) as well as News in Disciplinary Professional Quality Assurance around the Globe (Asia, Africa and United States).

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EASPA Webinar: Completing the QA circle

On 18 September 2023, the last EASPA webinar took place, during which the General Secretary of the Alliance, Dr Wasser, presented the considerable extent to which the organisation, founded by ASIIN in 2011, unites European umbrella associations that deal with quality assurance on the basis of agreed transnational learning outcomes/professional competence profiles. After initially referring to the European Qualifications Framework and then to the respective national qualifications frameworks in the Single European Education Area, the networks belonging to EASPA have developed their own subject-specific criteria in a third step. Current initiatives of the European Commission are currently aiming to develop sub-disciplinary qualifications frameworks in a fourth step, particularly in booming areas such as artificial intelligence or software engineering.

The corresponding presentation can be found here.

The next EASPA General Assembly will take place on 4 December 2023. The corresponding agenda can be downloaded here.

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NEW DATE: First EASPA Webinar on New Developments in European Quality Assurance

after the technical problems in the first attempt forced us to postpone, EASPA hereby cordially invites all current and potential new EASPA members to participate in its first webinar on May 4th, from 10 -12.30 o´clock (CEST).

You can join the meeting via computer, tablet or smartphone by simply clicking on the following link: https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/753849037 shortly before 10 c´clock on the meeting day.

Programme:

  1. Colin Tück, the Secretary General of the European Register EQAR and I myself will join hands in our joint presentation on “New Developments in European Quality Assurance: Innovative Ways to synergize International Recognition Procedures”, where we would like to discuss with you some new ideas of how to best combine various recognition procedures such as our own Network Authorization Procedure and other forms of European Agency Reviews like the review to become a member of the European Quality Assurance Register. The common element in all these reviews is obviously a compliance test against the European Standards and Guidelines.

  2. Jutta Breyer, the coordinator will give an overview of the new “European Software Skills Alliance” as an example on how to design and implement a comprehensive educational European framework,  combining the perspectives of universities, employers, ERIC/NARICs etc.  in a unique way and developing new educational programs on the way as model for other disciplines to follow suite.

  3. Prof. Rui Costa as Secretary General of the global International Food Association (IFA),will present its QA system for food science and engineering and provide an overview concerning its ongoing activities (Accreditation, European projects, conferences, online course databases, ejournals) as does

  4. Prof. John Butler,  C.E.O. of EQA Arts,  about new European QA developments in the European Higher Arts Education Arts Landscape.

As EASPA plans to establish a series of webinars, which will take place in a regular rhythm, current and potential new members are invited to send proposals for future webinar themes and presentations to gf@asiin.de.

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EASPA welcomes new members

During its General Assembly on 16 October 2020, EASPA members voted unanimously in favour of acceptance of three new member organizations. With EQ-Arts (concerned with quality assurance in arts programmes), ADEE (the association for dental education in Europe), and Iuventum (a UNESCO-associated organization for the promotion of global education), EASPA has significantly increased its multi-disciplinary perspective in professional and subject-specific quality assurance.

The president, the members of the executive board, and all other member organizations look forward to working with these new partners!