Last week ANQA’s delegation was in the Netherlands as part of the staff mobility program. The Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders (NVAO) provided an opportunity for working meetings, exchange of practice, and creation of collaborations for European organizations for education quality assurance. During the visit, the participants presented their organizations, approaches to quality assurance, current educational trends in their countries, and strategic development directions. The following topics were discussed:
- European practice on joint conduct of institutional and programme accreditation;
- European approaches to quality assurance of joint programmes;
- peculiarities and challenges of establishing European universities’ associations.
During the workshops, the mechanisms for stakeholders’ involvement in quality assurance processes were discussed. ANQA presented the Armenian practice of students’ involvement in the quality assurance system and preparation of student experts, which received great attention from other organizations. Participant countries also shared the practice of their thematic analyses. Within the scope of the staff mobility programme, ANQA’s specialists also had professional meetings with the representatives of different countries quality assurance organizations. Particularly, ANQA’s specialists discussed the Dutch practice of programme accreditation with the academic programmes’ quality assurance manager of the Hague University of Applied Sciences, as well as the practice of localization of the programme's initial accreditation in the Armenian educational context with NVAO. In addition, ANQA’s specialists had a meeting with the representatives of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands and got acquainted with the processes of quality assurance and recognition of micro-credentials.