On April 22, ANQA’s specialists conducted a monitoring at the Yerevan State College of Informatics. The monitoring primarily focused on:
- implementation process of the institution’s follow-up plan;
- changes in the quality assurance system and the annual plan of quality assurance activities;
- impact of accreditation on the institution’s educational processes.
Varduhi Gyulazyan, head of ANQA’s Institutional and Programme Accreditation Division and Meri Barseghyan, specialist at ANQA’s Policy Development and Implementation Division, held meetings with the institution’s director and vice directors, heads of chairs, teaching staff and students, as well as managers of quality assurance, internship and career. The following issues were under discussion:
- changes in the management system after receiving institutional accreditation;
- activities in the direction of resource replenishment;
- issues faced by the QA system and their KPIs;
- introduction of the research component in the academic programmes and all stages of the educational process, incentive mechanisms for teachers engaged in research;
- changes in the teaching and assessment process, effectiveness of internships and student assessment in the employer context;
- activities in the direction of the academic programme enhancement and cooperation with employers for this purpose;
- use of artificial intelligence in teaching and learning process, possible challenges;
- interprofessional collaboration and opportunities to facilitate it;
- mechanisms for raising student needs and responding to them;
- students' proficiency level of foreign languages and assignments fostering foreign language acquisition within professional courses.
The institution’s specialists presented the activities concerning the development of new standards and introduction and piloting of the academic programmes based on the labourmarket research, alongside the changes in the attestation system following study of international practice. The integration of annual self-evaluation principle following the accreditation process was recognized as a best practice, enabling effective implementation of the PDCA cycle in all processes. At the end of the monitoring, ANQA’s specialists introduced the areas subject to enhancement to the institution’s management staff and highlighted the identified best practices. An agreement was reached to present the institution’s best practice in the “Academic Programme Enhancement: Presenting Best Practices” online workshops regularly organized by ANQA. It should be noted that in 2021, the Yerevan State College of Informatics received institutional accreditation for a period of four years.