The European University Association (EUA) launched a Lifelong Learning/Erasmus project in autumn 2012 entitled ‘Promoting quality culture in higher education institutions’ (PQC) aimed at supporting institutional capacity building.
TERM/DURATION
01 October 2012 to 30 September 2013 (12 months)
PARTNERSHIP
The project applicant and coordinator was the European University Association (EUA) and the partnership included the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) Belgium, University of Zagreb Croatia, University of Duisburg-Essen Germany and University of Lisbon Portugal.
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
The PQC project followed up and built 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 built up their quality assurance (QA) systems, those in charge of managing quality at universities felt the need for further capacity building to incentivise all stakeholders (students, academic and administrative staff) to take 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.
PROJECT OUTCOMES
The project aimed at developing and implementing a series of trainings with a practical approach to strengthen quality cultures and provide quality managers with the opportunity to exchange experiences and build connections for future cooperation at European level. Moreover, PQC aimed to exploit the inputs gained from the universities through the trainings to devise a workshop for the staff of the European quality assurance agencies. In this way it communicated to agencies how they can support HEIs in developing quality cultures through the external QA procedures which they design and carry out.
PROJECT EVENTS
The partners sought 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).
PROJECT WEBSITE
Promoting Quality Culture in Higher Education Institutions – PQC