Evaluation of the EU "Education, Audiovisual and Culture" Executive Agency on ESPAQ project

ASUE Quality Assurance Division informs, that EU "Education, Audiovisual and Culture" Executive Agency gave the final high assessment on content and financial reports of the EU Tempus “Enhancing Students Participation in Quality Assurance in Armenian HE (ESPAQ)” (ESPAQ, №544261-TEMPUS-1-2013-1-BE-TEMPUS-SMGR). Meanwhile, the done work and achievements were also highly assessed by the representatives of National Office of “Erasmus+” program in Armenia within the frames of the monitoring visit. Congratulating for the productive participation in the Tempus program and the achieved results, the EU “Education, Audiovisual and Culture” Executive Agency hoped that partnership would be continuous. Memorandum signed between ASUE and the project partner SHU (Romania) was mentioned as an additional result.
Let's remind that the ESPAQ program was addressed to one of the key challenges of the Armenian higher education system and was aimed at expanding the involvement of students as internal stakeholders in the processes of Quality Assurance in Armenia (QA).
The project consortium has studied the motivation and obstacles of the Armenian students' participation at different levels of QA. Relevant conditions have been created for the expansion of students’ involvement in QA processes and the institutional capacity of the universities.
Particularly, in the framework of the "Study of Quality Assurance Processes in Armenia", a comparative analysis of the students' participation in Quality Assurance Processes in Europe and Eastern Neighborhood countries have been done and as a result "Students' involvement in Quality assurance" comparative analysis was published.
A study has been carried out on the participation of students in Quality Assurance Processes in Armenia and "Ensuring students' participation in HE Quality Assurance in Armenia" analysis was published. The above-mentioned studies have been published in the languages of the consortium member countries (Armenian, English, Italian, Spanish, Romanian).
”The Student’s Handbook” was developed and published after the "Student Role and Participation in QA Processes" meetings within the framework of the "Development of Student Skills in Quality Assurance (QA)" package. The handbook explores what is meant by quality, provides an overview of quality assurance and enhancement practices in higher education and then looks at internal and external quality processes and arrangements and the role of national bodies such as the Armenian National Centre for Professional Education and Quality Assurance (ANQA) and the Armenian National Students’ Association (ANSA). The audience for the handbook is primarily students and student representatives and it will be of use to staff working in HEIs particularly those working on quality assurance and quality enhancement activities.
Within the framework of the "Quality Assurance Simulations" package co-coordinated by ASUE, a series of trainings was organized, students visited the partner EU universities in Italy, Romania and Spain and had the opportunity to get acquainted with the systems and processes of internal Quality Assurance of universities, as well as the peculiarities of external education quality systems. This package included a number of trainings and workshops for student-experts aimed at acquiring skills and knowledge necessary for the analysis and evaluation of internal quality assurance systems. The second part of the work package was related to the participation of students in the external quality assurance system, the experience of institutional accreditation process, and the necessity and possibilities of student participation in it.
The project at ASUE has been implemented and coordinated by the ASUE Quality Assurance Division. The details of the project are available via following link.
Note, that this assessment is archived in the International Programs section in the ASUE Participation in Tempus Programs window on the ASUE official website.

ASUE Media and Public Relations Division