IIEP shares its expertise on External Quality Assurance

28 Mars 2011
Designing tailored training at local levels

Countries need mechanisms for External Quality Assurance (EQA) in higher education. IIEP has organized training courses since 2006 to develop capacities in ministries and agencies to implement these processes for EQA.1 Although the Institute continues receiving a number of training requests, it is now transferring its expertise to national or regional training institutions so that they in turn can develop training tailored to their context.

With help of IIEP, the set of five training modules on EQA can be translated for and adapted to each region/country. Institutions and networks are then taking the lead with the training sessions. This is an opportunity to increase rapidly and consistently the number of new professionals of EQA.

The effort is part of the Institute’s objective to share its knowledge and expertise as widely as possible.

1 Over the past five years, the IIEP distance education course on EQA was run successfully six times in different regions, and some 400 quality assurance professionals were trained.

Training the trainers

IIEP teamed up with UNESCO’s Section for Higher Education to organize in March 2011 an International Training of Trainers Workshop on Designing a Distance Education Course on External Quality Assurance in Paris. The event afforded researchers from the Institute an opportunity to share their knowledge on how to contextualize and prepare a regionally relevant course. Workshop participants learned about the different steps, options, and useful tools involved in organizing a distance training course on EQA.

Participants included a high-level group of some 20 representatives from 7 international and regional quality assurance networks:

  • the International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE),
  • the Arab Network for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ANQAHE),
  • the Asia-Pacific Quality Network (APQN),
  • the Caribbean Area Network for Quality Assurance in Tertiary Education (CANQATE),
  • the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) and the European Consortium for Accreditation in higher education (ECA), and
  • the Ibero-American Network for Higher Education Accreditation (RIACES).

Several of those in attendance expressed their intention to use the IIEP materials to create or enrich their own training programmes on EQA at national and regional levels.