On March 23th a conference on “Celebrating the impact of the student voice on quality enhancement” took place in Edinburg within the TEMPUS ESPAQ project. The host organization was the Student Partnerships in Quality Scotland.
During the conference were discussed topics such as “The international perspectives on student engagement in quality assurance and university decision making”, “Maximizing the student voice in institutional reviews”, “International approaches to enhancing the student voice in higher education” and etc. The Armenian experience on the enhancement of student participation in quality assurance was also presented.
Coordinator of the ESPAQ project in ANQA Ella Karagulyan presented the student involvement in quality assurance in Armenia. She highlighted the students’ participation in the accreditation process of HEIs: One of the expert panel members is a student. She also presented ANQA’s “Students’ voice” project. The main goal of the project is to raise students’ awareness of QA processes and to recruit new student experts. For this purpose Students’ voice project regularly organizes training for Armenian students.
The ESPAQ (Enhancing Students Participation in Quality Assurance in Armenian HE) project tackles one of the core challenges of Armenian higher education related to the quality of its provision and outcomes, through engaging the students in processes of quality assurance (QA) and enhancement of their learning experience.