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Quality assurance should promote change and drive it forward
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BRUSSELS
- It is essential to strengthen trust and to remove the obstacles that
students face in quality assurance activities in order to enhance their
participation. Students need to be involved at every stage in quality
assurance and decision-making processes so that the quality of higher
education can be improved.
Quality assurance activities should
not be limited only to learning and teaching processes, as other factors
may also influence the quality of higher education. Student-centred
learning approaches should be adequately implemented by higher education
institutions and public authorities should support that development.
Higher
education institutions need to develop their communication and
information channels to ensure that they provide the relevant
information to students according to their expectations. In that
respect, quality assurance needs to be transparent and accessible to the
wider public. Further research is, however, required on how students'
expectations are generated and how quality is conceptualised, especially
in relation to external influences.
These are among the main
outcomes of the Quest for Quality for Students' project (QUEST) that
were presented at a final conference at Neth-ER in Brussels on 31
October. The QUEST project, co-funded by the European Commission, was
officially launched in 2010. The team behind it has since then been
working hard on the ambitious task of identifying student views' on the
quality of higher education in order to develop a student-based concept
for this issue.
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Students can affect the quality of their education
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BRUSSELS
- Useful guidelines on how students can get involved and affect quality
assurance and enhancement activities have been published by the
European Students' Union (ESU) as part of the Quest for Quality for
Students project (QUEST). This includes a student handbook on quality
assurance and enhancement and a user driven Wiki-style website. Go to full article  
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ESU trains Moldovan students for quality assurance
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CHISINAU
- Representatives of the European Students' Union (ESU) organised a
training session on quality assurance of higher education for around
seventy students in the Republic of Moldova from 27 September to 1
October. This session was organised as part of a three year project on
the Development of Quality Assurance in Higher Education in Moldova
(QUAEM), which is run by the University of Leipzig in Germany in
collaboration with several partners, including ESU, and financed by the
TEMPUS programme of the European Union. Go to full article
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Access to education a global priority at ESU
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MONTRÉAL
- During the months of September and October, two events took place on
opposite sides of the world with remarkable alignment between their
outcomes and the sense of purpose in their participants. In Chiang Mai,
Thailand, the third Asia Europe Education Workshop was organised around
the theme "Beyond the Academic Benchmark - Societal Excellence in Higher
Education" organised by the Asia-Europe Foundation. Shortly after this,
in Montréal, Canada, the European Access Network organised the first
World Congress on Access to Postsecondary Education. Go to full article
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Internship opportunities in Ethiopia and the USA
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BRUSSELS
- In reply to the call for host organisations that the European
Students' Union published this summer, two more institutions have
expressed their interest in offering internship positions to students as
part of implementing the SiS Catalyst project.
After fulfilling
recommendations set by the evaluators and resubmitting improved
proposals, the Salish Kootenai (Tribal) College in Montana, United
States of America, and the Eco-Ethics International Union, in Ethiopia,
will offer the opportunity to three more students to gain practical
experience abroad and to work on topics related to social sciences. Go to full article
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Student centred learning assessed in a new ESU project
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BRUSSELS
- On 16 and 17 October, the European Students' Union (ESU) hosted a
kick-off meeting of a new project called Peer Assessment of Student
Centred Learning in Higher Education Institutions in Europe, or PASCL
for short. Go to full article
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Other relevant links
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| The European Students' Union, headquartered in Brussels, is the umbrella organisation
of 47 National Unions of Students from 39 European countries. ESU
represents and advocates the educational, social, economical and
cultural interests of students at the European level: European Union,
Council of Europe, UNESCO and the Bologna Follow Up Group.
Find out more about ESU on www.esu-online.org or check out our social media:
For more information, contact:
Robert Hlynur Baldursson
Communications Manager
+ 32 2 502 23 62
+ 32 473 669 894
robert@esu-online.org
ESU - European Students' Union
Rue de la Sablonnière 20
1000 Bruxelles, BELGIUM
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