Representatives of IQAA took part in the seminar organized by the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA). This event was held on 12-13 October 2017 on the basis of the Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders (NVAO) Hague, Netherlands.

In the beginning of the seminar a Chair of the NVAO Board, Anne Flierman, made a brief presentation of the host agency. Director of ENQA, Maria Kelo, in her turn, informed all participants with the main purposes and methods of the seminar. In particular, the aim of this seminar was to support the development of quality assurance agencies by the exchange of advanced experience and recommendations on the improvement of practices. Participants also had an opportunity to discuss their challenges in the process of preparing and undergoing the external review by ENQA, as well as to share their opinions regarding the realization of certain criteria in ESG 2015.

The programme of the seminar consisted of three parts focused on the following key topics:

1. Embedding the ESG 2015 - experiences from agencies;

2. How have we addressed the challenges of the ESG 2015?

3. Post-review progress and (un)expected outcomes.

In the framework of the seminar representatives of foreign quality assurance agencies demonstrated their reports on the following topics:

- Role of QA agency in implementing the ESG 2015 nationally (speaker - Caty Duykaerts, Director of the Executive Unit, AEQES);

- External review as development process of the agency (Antonio Serrano González, Director, ACPUA);

- Revising methodologies and linking criteria with Part 1: Stakeholder involvement in the process (Helka Kekäläinen, Head of Unit, FINEEC);

- Student-centred learning (David Metz, Special Advisor, AI);

- Thematic analysis (Almantas Šerpatauskas, Head of Study Programme Evaluation Division, SKVC).

Also, the programme of the second day of the seminar included practical work on the discussion of the progress, implemented after holding external assessment, comparative analysis of changes in versions of ESG 2005 and 2015, as well as the discussion of further plans on the preparation to a progress visit by ENQA representatives.

Detailed information on this seminar is available on the official ENQA website.

The photos are taken from the official ENQA Facebook page