Occasional Papers

This thematic analysis of ENQA’s agency review reports has provided insights into main agency practices, best practices and existing limitations in relation to the standards 3.4, 3.6 and 2.1 of the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (the “ESG”). In total, 27 agency review reports were considered in the analysis. The sub-themes for analysis have been defined based on the descriptors found in the ESG and the analysis has focused on identifying approaches based on descriptions provided in the external review reports of the 27 agencies. Panels’ commendations and compliance levels have been used to identify and define good practice. Recommendation sections have provided insights into limitations in compliance with the ESG.

This paper is an outcome of one of the small group projects of the ENQA Leadership Development Programme 2018. It looks at how innovation in teaching and learning is considered in external quality assurance in four European countries.

This report presents considerations for quality assurance of e-learning provision by the ENQA Working group VIII on Quality Assurance and E-learning.

This report presents the findings of the ENQA working group on quality assurance and recognition’s research into determining the state of the art – including roles, interests, mandates, policies, and practices – where QA agencies and issues of academic recognition are concerned.

The present publication reports the findings of the “Quality Assurance of Cross-border Higher Education (QACHE)” project. This report summarises the findings from several data collection phases which included surveys, in-depth country reports, and regional forums. The gathered information resulted in the production of the project’s key outcomes – the Toolkit for Quality Assurance Agencies and recommendations for policymakers at the national and European level – and revealed a further need for better facilitation and strengthened cooperation in the quality assurance of cross-border higher education.

This document represents the latest efforts of the ENQA Staff Development Group, as a follow-up to an initial report from April 2014 in which the working group identified, at a high level, the common core competencies of quality assurance and quality enhancement professionals in ENQA member agencies.

This Toolkit is the result of a project co-financed by the Erasmus Mundus Programme of the European Union and coordinated by the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA). The project, called Quality Assurance of CrossBorder Higher Education (QACHE), aimed at enhancing the quality assurance of higher education provided across national borders. In the context of the QACHE project, cross-border higher education (CBHE) refers to any learning activity in which the students are based in a different country from the country in which the institution providing the education is located. This includes the cross-border mobility of study programmes and higher education providers, such as branch campuses overseas, collaborative partnerships in the form of joint-programmes, validation or franchising arrangements, and distance learning provision, but excludes international student mobility.

The publication is based on the findings of the “Transparency of European higher education through public quality assurance reports (EQArep)” project. This report investigates the current state of content, structure and publication of quality assurance reports while trying to understand the expectations and demands of stakeholders with regard to these reports. This report sheds light on the existing gap between what is expected by the stakeholders and the reality of the situation. In addition, the report provides QA agencies with a set of European Guidelines for summary reports and some generic recommendations on the structure and publication of the comprehensive reports in order to support these agencies in producing reports with understandable and comparable information.