Internal Quality Management: Evaluating and Improving Competence-Based Higher Education Erasmus Project

Project Title

Internal Quality Management: Evaluating and Improving Competence-Based Higher Education

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal); Quality Assurance; Recognition, transparency, certification

Project Summary

TWO TOPICS became prevalent in European Higher Education Area in the past years due to the Bologna Process.

The first topic is COMPETENCE-BASED HIGHER EDUCATION. The focus now is more on students and their competences and less on teachers and their imparting knowledge. This results in a fundamental shift in higher education as new curricula, teaching methods, exam formats, and learning strategies are implemented. The second topic is QUALITY. Quality and efficiency of European education systems are fostered by different strategies like the ‘Standards and Guidelines for Quality Management in European Higher Education Institutions’ (ESG, 2015) or the EU programme Erasmus+.

As a consequence many higher education institutions (HEIs) are now looking for new quality management procedures that address the students’ competences as well as the competence-based teaching and learning process. The PROJECT ‘Internal Quality Management: Evaluating and Improving Competence-Based Higher Education’ picked up the need for a new procedure. We developed a procedure that is primarily designed for internal quality management at HEIs, to be undertaken by internal evaluators or quality managers.

Our project had three OBJECTIVES:

1. WE DEVELOPED a new quality management procedure and an according toolkit that helps HEIs in implementing the new procedure. The Toolkit is called ‘European Toolkit for Internal Quality Management in Competence-Based Higher Education’.
2. WE IMPLEMENTED and tested the new procedure and the European Toolkit in five HEIs.
3. WE DISSEMINATED the European Toolkit to European HEIs.

The PROJECT CONSORTIUM consisted of ten partners, coordinated by Vetmeduni Vienna.

Five HEIs formed the so-called IMPLEMENTATION TEAM: (1) University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, (2) University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, (3) University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, (4) University of Oldenburg, Germany, and (5) Vilnius University, Lithuania (all public and non-profit institutions). These five HEIs already had experience with competence-based teaching. They implemented and tested the newly developed procedure and the European Toolkit. The University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, additionally brought in experience with a scientific pilot study on competence-based evaluation instruments in developing the European Toolkit.

The ACTIVITIES of the implementation team were (a) developing the tools of the European Toolkit, (b) implementing and testing the European Toolkit at their higher education institutions, and (c) disseminating the European Toolkit to a mostly local target audience.

The other partners formed the EXPERT TEAM: (6) ENQA (non-public, non-profit), (7) EAEVE (non-public, non-profit), (8) AQ Austria (public, non-profit), (9) as well as experts from the University of Economics and Business, Vienna (public, non-profit), and from (10) the University of Vienna (public, non-profit). The expert team provided international expertise in quality assurance in higher education as well as expertise in competence research, evaluation research, and implementation research.

The ACTIVITIES of the expert team were (a) developing a handbook, (b) continually reviewing the other tools developed by the implementation team, (c) giving advice in the implementation phase and (d) disseminating the European Toolkit to a mostly international target audience.

The project had three main RESULTS. The first result is the European Toolkit, which includes many tools:

• A handbook on how to implement internal quality management for competence-based teaching and learning.
• Information material for decisions-makers, students, teachers, etc.
• Workshop ideas
• Templates for questionnaires
• Template for a report
• Collection of possible measures for quality enhancement and quality assurance
• and many more

The second result is the implementation of the new procedure in five HEIs as well as experience and lessons learned. The third result is the wide range of dissemination activities and -products. The most important dissemination product is the project website www.iqm-he.eu where the toolkit as well as the implementation partners’ experience is freely available.

The project had IMPACT on the project participants (e.g. by integrating different perspectives on quality management, now having an expert network) and the participating organizations (e.g. by implementing a new quality management procedure), as well as the ultimate target group, which is European HEIs that received information on the project and its results (via website, newsletters, conference talks, workshops, etc.).

Due to a long list of implementation and dissemination actions within the project we are looking forward to the LONGER-TERM BENEFITS of our project: European Toolkit provides a helpful piece of the puzzle for enhancing the quality and efficiency of the European higher education institutions.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 308148,75 Eur

Project Coordinator

VETERINAERMEDIZINISCHE UNIVERSITAET WIEN & Country: AT

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITATEA DE STIINTE AGRICOLE SI MEDICINA VETERINARA CLUJ NAPOCA
• UNIVERZA V LJUBLJANI
• EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION FOR QUALITY ASSURANCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION AISBL
• EAEVE
• UNIVERSITAT WIEN
• Agentur für Qualitätssicherung und Akkreditierung Austria
• VILNIAUS UNIVERSITETAS