INQAAHE Conference 2011

From the 4th until the 7th of April NVAO Vice Chair and INQAAHE Secretary Guido Langouche attended the biennial INQAAHE Conference 2011 together with NVAO Policy advisors Mark Frederiks and Esther van den Heuvel (INQAAHE Administrator and Project officer). The INQAAHE conference took place in Madrid, Spain. Since 2008 NVAO is providing the INQAAHE Secretariat.

The Conference theme of this year was "Quality Assurance: Foundation for the Future". On the 4th of April four workshops have been held concerning standards and learning outcomes, managing an external quality assurance agency, internal quality assurance and effective site-visits. On the 5th, 6th and 7th of April various keynote and paper sessions were organised relating to the themes "Globalizing forces and national/regional goals", "the Professionalisation of Quality Assurance", "Effective QA processes for diversity, development and sustainability" and "Independence of Quality Assurance vis a vis different stakeholders". The distinctive quality feature Internationalisation was presented by NVAO and INQAAHE Secretary Guido Langouche participated in the INQAAHE Board Meetings and General Assembly. During the afternoon of Thursday 7 April two meetings have been organised: one for the regional accreditation networks and another for the specialized accreditors

The much appreciated closing speech was given by Dirk Van Damme, Head of CERI (Centre for Education Research and Innovation) at OESO. He addressed the main challenges of and solutions for current quality assurance issues. 280 participants from 70 countries took part in this event.