Services and Projects
Working Groups
Participation in working groups offers ECA members and observers the chance to learn from each other and discuss the latest developments and projects in QA and accreditation.
Trainings
ECA provides trainings in different areas: in being a more effective trainer (“train the trainer”), in the assessment of the quality of internationalisation, and in other issues (“Ad Hoc”) as prioritised by ECA members.
Our trainers are experts in their field and will provide you with state of the art knowledge, key skills and advanced tools.
Webinars
ECA occasionally organises webinars on topics that are relevant for QA, internationalisation, European Universities, micro-credentials, etc.
Latest webinars:
EU projects
ECA offers a range of services to higher education institutions and quality assurance and accreditation agencies and participates in (EU funded) projects.
Fostering Student Engagement through Qualitative Quality Assurance Practices (Qual-AI-ty Engagement) is an Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships project lead by Riga Technical University (https://www.rtu.lv/en) and co-lead by ACEEU (https://www.aceeu.org/). Other partners include the University of Twente (https://www.utwente.nl/en/), the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (https://www.mcast.edu.mt/) and the European Consortium for Accreditation in higher education (https://ecahe.eu/).
The project aims at breaking the old tradition and enforcing a new approach to assess the quality of education offered by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) resources to acquire and process qualitative data, thus enhancing efficiency and creating a culture of quality for student engagement.
The specific objectives of the project are:
- Mapping out the status quo of student engagement with society in Europe, showcasing best practices and highlighting the major drivers and barriers to accomplishing it.
- Actively engaging and educating Quality Assurance (QA) staff with the matters pertaining to student engagement so as to be able to evaluate and ultimately foster it.
- Co-creating new modes of student engagement evaluation together with students as a means of providing new and more comprehensive perspectives to QA.
- Creating a machine-based learning algorithm to analyse qualitative data on student engagement and spur efficiency, bringing about a new approach to QA instruments.
- Forging a platform showcasing qualitative-data on student engagement to increase visibility of QA and student engagement in general.
- Creating an Action Plan on fostering student engagement with society on the European Union level, easily replicable by other Higher Education Institutions interested in enforcing the same vision.
The duration of the project is 26 months from November 2020 to October 2022. For further information please consult the project website (https://qual-ai-ty.eu/) and the LinkedIn account (https://www.linkedin.com/company/qual-ai-ty-engagement).
The Measuring and Comparing Achievements of Learning Outcomes in Higher Education in Europe Extension (calohEx) project is a follow-up of the CALOHEE project implemented in 2016-2018.
The project granted is an extension of CALOHEE I and aims to develop comparable Frameworks for five subject areas that were not cover in the project already implemented. These are: Business Administration, Information Engineering/ICT; International Relations; Medicine; Performing and Fine Arts.
ECA will be member of the Advisory Board. The role of this board is both advisory and supportive to keep the project on track and to ensure maximum impact. It will offer advice regarding the main steps, the key documents (frameworks) to be developed, as well as the documents which will focus on a follow-up of this project, the actual testing phase.
The aim of the project is to raise awareness and shift the internal culture of institutions towards internationalization, thus creating a systemic change in the institutions and in European Higher Education.
SUCTI Academia is built on SUCTI, which was is a three-year initiative (2016-2019) approved for funding under the European Commission’s Erasmus+ – KA2 Strategic Partnerships for higher education focusing on the internationalisation of administrative staff. The project was coordinated by the URV, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain).
The project aims to provide students with sufficient knowledge and resources to ensure their position as equal partners in the institutions’ evaluation.
Recent changes in the Slovak legislature and lacking students experts in Hungary forced both student unions to seek an expert support in the European Students’ Union and the European Consortium for Accreditation. In 24 months the four organisations will address challenges met not only by students and QA system in Slovakia and Hungary but are spread all around the continent. The results of the projects will raise awareness and develop strategies for more meaningful European students’ involvement in the quality assurance.
The project is coordinated by Nuffic. ECA is a member of the Steering Group.
The Yerevan Communique from 2015 calls to make Automatic Recognition a reality by 2020. Therefore AR-net wishes to contribute to ‘de facto’ Automatic Recognition (AR) from four different angles:
1 – Experimenting with the implementation of AR in a number of ENIC-NARIC centres, resulting in recommendations;
2 – Produce a Policy Paper on the Portability of Recognition Decisions;
3 – Update and promote existing recognition tools: EAR-HEI, EAR (e)manuals and STREAM admissions platform;
4 – Strengthen the quality assurance of the ENIC-NARIC networks.
Project activities:
- Review outcomes previous projects (ie PARADIGMS and IMPACT);
- Desk research to collect any new developments in AR and examples of portability of recognition decisions;
- Development of Blueprints and reports for the i) Analysis report of the 25 peer reviews, ii) Implementation of AR and iii) Policy paper on portability of recognition decisions;
- Revision of the Standard & Guidelines and the EAR (e-)manual and the EAR-HEI manual/STREAM platform;
- Explore the implementation of Automatic Recognition in two test rounds;
- Enable 6 centres to undertake Peer Reviews;
- Dissemination and Mainstreaming of results.
- Two project meetings.
Target groups
ENIC-NARIC networks and centres, admissions officers, European HE policy makers, students.
The consortium consists of the following partners:
Core team:
- Nuffic (coordinator)
- NARIC Lithuania
- NARIC Denmark
- NARIC Portugal
Sub team:
- NARIC Italy
- NARIC Norway
- NARIC Czech Republic
- NARIC Ireland
- UK-NARIC
Steering Group:
- Vice-President LRC Committee
- European University Association – EUA
- European Consortium for Accreditation in higher education – ECA
The project fits in Nuffic’s focus to work on projects to streamline the recognition process.
Final outcomes of the project :
The project is coordinated by Nuffic. ECA is a member of the Steering Group.
Over the last few years new forms of online learning, such as MOOCs and SPOCs have mushroomed and continue to do so. The PARADIGMS project (NARIC 2016-2018 call), addressed the need for guidelines on the recognition of MOOCs and SPOCs by formulating recommendations for an evaluation format to signal and evaluate individual competences of applicants gained through alternative forms of learning. However, PARADIGMS also showed that credential evaluators need more transparency and information on online study programmes, to allow for sound decision making.
The objectives of e-VALUATE are therefore to:
- Provide an overview of the current state of play regarding online learning;
- Undertake a needs assessment of the type of information HEIs require for the recognition of MOOCs and SPOCs;
- Develop an Online Learning Information Tool for HEI. The Tool will include specific information on (the recognition of) online learning trajectories for refugees.
- Include the guidelines on the academic recognition of e-learning in the EAR and EAR HEI (e)manual.
Although the outcomes of e-VALUATE will be of broad use for the academic recognition of MOOCs and SPOCs, special focus will be on improving refugees’ access to higher education.
Target groups:
Higher education institutions (HEI), ENIC-NARIC centres, students, online education providers, policy makers, refugee organiations.
The consortium consists of the following partners:
Core team:
- Nuffic (coordinator)
- NARIC Norway
- NARIC Denmark
- NARIC Lithuania
- UK-NARIC
Sub team:
- NARIC Ireland
Steering Group:
- KIRON
- European Consortium for Accreditation in higher education – ECA
- Vice President LRC Committee
The project fits in Nuffic’s focus to work on projects to streamline the recognition process.
The European Approach for Quality Assurance of Joint Programmes has been adopted by European Higher Education Area Ministers in Yerevan in May 2015. It is meant to be a step forward towards minimising barriers in external quality assurance of joint programmes.
The main aim of the project is to support efficient implementation of the European Approach for Quality Assurance of Joint Programmes.
This aim will be achieved by successful completion of the following objectives:
- Identifying key obstacles in the implementation of the European Approach in the European Higher Education Area in general, and project partner countries in particular.
- Supporting partner QA agencies in running EA-based programme accreditation procedures in ex-ante and ex-post modes.
- Supporting partner higher education institutions in pursuing the external accreditation based on the EA
- Developing the European Approach implementation online toolkit, as a set of recommendations and proposed solutions for the policy makers, accreditation agencies and higher education institutions. The toolkit will be based on the experience gained through the project but also from other sources.
The project foresees conducting 4 (pilot) accreditation procedures based on the European Approach framework and its methodology. It should considerably increase the number of practical examples and good practices.
Based on that experience, the EA implementation toolkit will be developed. It will be an online and freely available tool and become the main and sustainable outcome of the project. It will gather all available knowledge, good practices and guidance supporting policymakers, quality assurance agencies and higher education institutions in the realisation of the main principles behind the European Approach.
The partnership is composed of 9 partners from 5 countries:
- Polish Accreditation Committee (Poland) – project leader
- European Consortium for Accreditation in Higher Education (The Netherlands)
- European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (Belgium)
- AQAS (Germany)
- Unibasq – Agencia de Calidad del Sistema Universitario Vasco (Spain)
- Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (Poland)
- University of Deusto (Spain)
- Warsaw School of Tourism and Recreation (Poland)
- Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg (Germany)
For more information on the ImpEA project click here.
The European project on “Assessing quality of partnerships amongst Higher Education Institutions” aims to upscale the use of the eQuATIC prototype in order increase the quality of existing international partnerships. Moreover the project aims to initiate a debate about embedding internationalisation in quality assurance policies. The project is coordinated by Ghent University.
Since the beginning of the Erasmus programme the number of bilateral agreements between higher education institutions has increased massively. In recent years, however, the focus in setting up such agreements has shifted more and more from quantity to quality, from “partners” to “partnerships”. The question now is: how can we objectively monitor the quality of our partnerships?
Within Flanders this question recently led to the development of a prototype of an Online Quality Assessment Tool for International Cooperation (eQuATIC). This tool measures and exposes strengths and weaknesses in international cooperation and partnerships. The main principle of eQuATIC is the use of quantified indicators based on already available data taken from various data sources. By converting quantitative and descriptive data into figures, cooperation with partners at different levels can easily be analysed and improved.
The main objective of the project is to generalise the use of the eQuATIC prototype in order to apply it for assessing quality of partnerships amongst Higher Education Institutions (HEI). Upscaling the use of eQuATIC on a European scale will lead to better monitoring of quality of international cooperation and will contribute to more successful partnerships and therefore a more efficient European Higher Education Area.
Moreover the project partners aim to foster a debate about quality assurance in internationalisation and stimulate data-informed decision making.
For more information on the eQuatic project click here.
The IMPACT-“Quality and Impact of the Recognition Networks” project had the following aims:
- Extending the QA and peer review system of recognition offices, including facilitating a new round of peer reviews;
- Connecting European admissions officers to the ENIC-NARIC networks (using the 800+ participants of the STREAM platform as a starting point);
- Assessing the impact of the ENIC-NARIC networks on recognition in the EHEA (making use of EUA’s evaluation expertise).
The EU funded IMPACT project was coordinated by EP-Nuffic. ECA acted as external expert and is part of the project’s steering group.
For the project results click here.
Do students enrolled in higher education around Europe develop the competences they need? Are study programmes delivering their promises? Can we learn to compare student’s achievements in different countries in a meaningful way?
The EU funded project CALOHEE will help to find the answers to these questions by developing the infrastructure that will eventually make it possible to test bachelor and master students’ performance Europe-wide across a range of fields in a way that satisfies the needs of the various stakeholders in the European higher education community.
The project covers five subject areas, representing five significant academic domains: Engineering (Civil Engineering), Health Care (Nursing), Humanities (History), Natural Sciences (Physics) and Social Sciences (Education). The methodology to be developed should also be applicable for other fields of study.
The frameworks to be developed in these fields will use the same methodology, but they will be tailored to the characteristics of each domain or subject area, taking into account the diversity of missions, orientations and profiles of universities in Europe and their various degree programmes.
CALOHEE is a Feasibility Study initiated by the International Tuning Academy (TUNING Projects) in close cooperation with Educational Testing Service (ETS) and supported by the European Commission. ECA is as project partner participating in the combined meetings of the Advisory Board and Quality Assurance Board.
For more information see the CALOHEE project website.
Using the European Approach for Quality Assurance of Joint Programmes for the accreditation of a brand new joint programme in European Political Science. The consortium comprises universities from Austria (coordinator), Italy, Slovenia, Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, and Bosnia-Herzegowina.
For more information click here.
ECA’s role is to advise on the implementation of the European Approach to reach accreditation in the 5 countries that currently need programme accreditation. The Euro PS consortium have chosen AQ Austria to carry out the accreditation procedure using the European Approach.
Faster and more transparent recognition procedures within the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) will improve student mobility throughout Europe. The FAIR project will contribute to streamline recognition procedures in the EHEA by measuring the effect of the implementation of elements of automatic recognition in the recognition procedures of 22 higher education institutions from six countries. The outcomes will be used to make concrete recommendations on how to improve recognition procedures. Not only at the 22 participating higher education institutions, but also in the six countries involved and at the European level.
Automatic recognition means that the recognition of a degree automatically makes the degree holder eligible for a follow-up study programme in any EHEA country.
Automatic recognition thus standardises recognition at the system level (‘a bachelor is a bachelor is a bachelor’). It will, however, always be necessary to evaluate at the programme level whether the applicant is likely to succeed in the goal for which recognition is sought.
Automatic recognition has been an objective within the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) right from its creation in 1999. The concept was revisited a few years ago, when the ‘Pathfinder Group on Automatic Recognition’ was founded. The FAIR project takes on one of the main recommendations of this group: to explore how this concept can be taken on board in higher education institutions.
FAIR is coordinated by EP-Nuffic and the Dutch Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. It is EU funded under Erasmus+ Key Action 3. ECA is a project partner, especially with regard to quality assurance and the revised European Standards & Guidelines (ESG), which recommends recognition to be part of the quality assurance process.
For the EP-Nuffic project website click here.
The CeQuInt project has developed a methodology to assess the quality of internationalisation in higher education. The overall aim of the project partners was to assess, enhance and reward internationalisation.
The project was co-funded by the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union.
Web of the project
The external quality assurance and accreditation (QA/A) of joint programmes is a challenge for both joint programmes and QA/A agencies as it normally includes multiple national accreditation procedures. The project instead seeks to promote single accreditation procedures through;
- the development of a multilateral recognition agreement regarding QA and accreditation results and
- by the establishment of a European coordination point for external QA and accreditation of joint programmes.
There are currently also a lot of problems with the recognition of the degrees awarded by joint programmes which the project seeks to solve through the following specific objectives:
- Awareness-raising among higher education institutions and joint programmes about ENIC-NARICs’ expectations regarding joint programmes, the design of the degree they award and the content of the diploma supplement.
- The establishment of a common ground among ENIC-NARICs regarding the recognition of degrees awarded by joint programmes.
- Transparent information provision regarding Erasmus Mundus programmes through Qrossroads.
This projects was realised with the support of the Erasmus Mundus action 3 (Promotion of European higher education) of the European Union.
(Redirected from E-TRAIN)
The project European Training of QA Experts (E-TRAIN) is another project of ECA. The overall aim of E-TRAIN is to facilitate the sharing of trained, knowledgeable, and internationally experienced experts who will be better equipped to participate in QA procedures, to the benefit of higher education institutions under review.
The TEAM II project contributed to taking away accreditation and recognition barriers for joint programmes by exploring potential accreditation & recognition procedures.
Web of the project (Redirected from TEAM II)
The main objectives of the TEAM-project were the implementation of a tool providing information on qualifications from accredited programmes and/or institutions.
