A two-day online event bringing quality assurance staff to reflect on how to integrate “student engagement with society” as a dimension of higher education quality.
The Qual-AI-ty Bootcamp hosted last week was a space for exchanging experiences, perspectives, and visions on fostering a culture of quality on student engagement with society. The co-creation workshops brought quality assurance staff to reflect on integrating “student engagement with society” as a dimension of quality in higher education. This activity was part of the project “Fostering Student Engagement through AI-driven Qualitative Quality Assurance Practices (Qual-AI-ty Engagement)”.
Qual-AI-ty Engagement is an Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships project that started in 2021 and aims to empower quality assurance staff to take a proactive role in fostering student engagement with society and to create innovative student engagement strategies successfully. As a support tool, the project will create a collaborative machine-learning-based platform to assess, analyse, and graphically showcase student feedback about the impacts of their engagement with society.
Initially planned as an onsite event at the University of Twente, the Qual-AI-ty Bootcamp was developed online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The objective was to co-create a shared vision and define the requirements for embedding student engagement with society in the quality assurance frameworks of higher education institutions, supported by qualitative data analysed through artificial intelligence tools. The development of the Bootcamp allowed quality assurance staff from different countries to exchange knowledge and share experiences with the project consortium. On the other hand, it allowed the project researchers to collect information on the requirements for assessing student engagement with society and building a comprehensive Qual-AI-ty Assessment Model to drive student engagement with society. This information will be the basis for developing policy and artificial intelligence tools that promote student engagement with society proactively.
In the Qual-AI-ty Bootcamp participated the staff involved in quality assurance and accreditation from Germany (Accreditation Council for Entrepreneurial and Engaged Universities - ACEEU), Latvia (Riga Technical University), Malta (Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology – MCAST), and Spain (University of Santiago de Compostela). We had a diversity of profiles such as Accreditation Coordinator, Vice-Dean for Academic Affairs, Deputy Director for Quality Assurance, Quality Assurance Manager, Career Advisor, Strategic Planning Director, among others. The participants engaged in the discussion, the co-creation exercises, and the definition of priorities and requirements for implementing student engagement with society in higher education.
The event was organised by ACEEU and supported by the partners of the consortium: European Consortium for Accreditation in Higher Education ECA, Riga Technical University, Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology – MCAST and the University of Twente.
Website of the project
LinkedIn of the project
Download the Qual-AI-ty Bootcamp Facilitators’ Guide
