Events

On 13 October 2021, CEENQA’s yearly General Assembly and the accompanying workshop took place.

During the General Assembly, Olgun Cicek (YÖDAK, Northern Cyprus) was elected CEENQA’s new Vice-President. Simona Lache (ARACIS, Romania) and Benjamin Muhamedbegovic (HEA, Bosnia and Herzegovina) were elected new board members.

The workshop on “Online evaluations and external quality assurance” dealt with the changes to evaluation procedures brought along by the pandemic. Based on the experiences of the agencies in various European countries, it was discussed what lessons have been learned, what can be improved to adapt to changed circumstances and how quality assurance procedures will be conducted in the future.

You can find the presentations of the workshop here:
Anca Prisacariu: Adapting external quality assurance processes to an online format
Nataliia Stukalo: QA in pandemic times: Lessons learnt by NAQA (Ukraine)
Klemen Subic: CEENQA Guidelines for distance evaluation
Jolanta Silka: The importance of feedback and communication on the online evaluations

The working group of the Executive Board of the Central and Eastern European Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (CEENQA) composed of Martina Vidlakova, Olgun Cicek and Duska Radmanovic held an online meeting to discuss the implementation of this year’s Staff Exchange Program between network members.

The meeting was held on January 25, 2021 and was committed to finding a suitable partner for all ten agencies that applied on this year call to participate in the CEENQA 2021 Staff Exchange Program.

Taking into account the expressed interests of the agencies in terms of topics they consider current, the language in which the visits would take place, as well as previous collaborations, the working group agreed on five potential pairs of agencies. The proposal will be forwarded to all interested agencies, but, as in previous years, the agencies will be given the opportunity to decide on different combinations.

Due to the Corona virus pandemic, it was decided that it is recommended that staff exchanges be conducted through virtual visits. As part of the 2020 visit has been postponed, due to the pandemic, these agencies will also be proposed to join this year’s program.

The CEENQA staff exchange program between the member agencies of the network has been organized since 2018.

CEENQA is launching a new call to member agencies to participate in the staff exchange scheme in 2021. Given the ongoing pandemic and uncertain outlook to the future with respect to international travel, the 2021 staff exchange is foreseen to take place fully online. The recommended activities to pursue include: online meetings, focus groups, presentations, job shadowing, etc. Observation of online site visits and of online training of experts is strongly recommended.
Agencies planning to host and/or send staff members for fully virtual staff exchange in 2021 are asked to reply to this call by 10 January, 2021. After collecting the responses from interested agencies, CEENQA will match mutually suitable agencies and put them in touch with each other to organize the details of staff exchange.
The responses to this call and any requests for more information should be sent to Dr Olgun Cicek, Board Member (olguncicek@yahoo.com) by 10 January, 2021. Mark your calendars now!

The German CEENQA member FIBAA has recently presented a detailed analysis of Digital Transformation in Quality Assurance and its Impact on Communication. A short version of the article is also published in the CEENQA Newsletter 02/2020. The full version of the study can be accessed here.

The CEENQA member Kosovo Accreditation Agency (KAA) is about to start its annual process of evaluations in Higher Education with international experts between December 2020 until June 2021.
KAA has recently launched a call for higher education experts from all fields of studies to become a member of an expert panel. CEENQA invites all interested individuals to answer this call for the purpose of international cooperation and quality assurance.
The criteria and other information related to the procedures of becoming an expert for KAA can be found here.