Proudly hosted by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA UK), INQAAHE Conference 2021 was held virtually, under the title Re-Imagining Higher Education Quality in an Age of Uncertainty from Tuesday 1st to Thursday 10th June 2021.

Due to the on-going international travel restrictions, the uncertainty around the safety of large face-to-face gatherings and our ambition to reach out to as many of our members as possible through this event, the INQAAHE Board took the decision to hold the Conference fully online with a strong Scottish flavour and in the following format:

• Pre-Conference Workshops – June 1st to June 4th, 2021
• The Conference – June 7th to June 10th, 2021

All pre-Conference and Conference materials are available below.

Pre-Conference Workshops

Workshop 1

• GGP – Guidelines of Good Practice, facilitated by Dr Susanna Karakhanyan, President of INQAAHE and Higher Education Policy and Regulation Director at the Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge, and Erika Soboleva, Director of the Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education and Career Development (AKKORK)

Workshop 2

• People matter: professional development of agency staff, facilitated by Maria Kelo, Director of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA)
  Experience from the ENQA Leadership Development Programme (LDP), facilitated by Anaïs Gourdin, Senior Project Manager (ENQA)

Workshop 3

• Measurement of learning outcome achievement – Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+), facilitated by Dr Doris Zahner, Chief Academic Officer, Council for Aid to Education (CAE), and Margo Griffith, Head of Business Development at Edalex

White papers:
– 2018.10.01.Zahner.VanDamme.Benjamin.Lehrfeld
– 2021.02.19.Essential Higher Education and Career Skills
– Steedle, Bradley (2012) Majors Matter 2012-02-21

Workshop 4

• More permeable university learning: quality assurance of microcredentials, facilitated by Sue Reece, Pro Vice-Chancellor Education at Kingston University

Conference Presentations

Keynote addresses

• Maintaining trust in the face of uncertainty, presented by Bryan Alexander, senior scholar at Georgetown University
• Do changing learner journeys require changes to quality assurance?, presented by Professor Maria Hinfelaar, Vice-Chancellor of Wrexham Glyndwr University, Professor Sue Rigby, Vice-Chancellor of Bath Spa University, Professor John Sawkins, Pro-Vice-Chancellor at Heriot-Watt University, Vicki Stott, Deputy CEO at the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA)
• New quality agendas for external and internal quality assurance, presented by Dirk Van Damme, former Senior Counsellor in the Directorate for Education and Skills at the OECD
• Digital disruption for higher education brings disruption for quality assurance, presented by Dr Santiago Acosta Aide, full professor of Spanish-American Literature at the Private Technical University of Loja – UTPL (Ecuador)

DAY 1 Paper presentations

• Quality online/digital learning: ensure academic integrity through authentic assessments and student engagement, presented by Dr Yaping Gao, Quality Matters, Dr Reem Al Buainain, Acting CEO Bahrain Polytechnic, Dr Jameel Hasan, Bahrain Polytechnic
• Rethinking quality through online learning: an opportunity within a crisis, presented by Dr Tashmin Khamis, the Aga Khan University
• The supporting role of quality agencies for a sustainable QA system: the education model in the “new normal” environment, presented by Dr Deniz Kozanoglu, Advisor, Turkish Higher Education Quality Council (THEQC)
• Virtual quality assurance in higher education – the case of the virtual reviewing process of Guidelines of Good Practice alignment for Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan, presented by I-Jung Grace, Lu, Assistant Professor, Institute of Teacher Education, Tung Hai University, Taiwan
• “Blending” a sociology course to promote active learning: experience of a sociology classroom at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, presented by Iresha M. Lakshman, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka
• Assuring quality amid pandemic: case study of the largest public-sector higher education institution of UAE, presented by Dr N. A. Khan, Higher Colleges of Technology HCT, United Arab Emirates, and Dr Alison Felce, Quality Assurance Agency, United Kingdom

DAY 2 Paper presentations

• Regulating quality for global hybrid higher education, presented by Professor Hamish Coates, Institute of Education, Tsinghua University, Beijing
• Relationship-building to strengthen indigenous authority in the thought leaders circle, presented by Liwana Bringelson, Ontario College Quality Assurance Service, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Development of a methodology to assess innovative methodologies in teaching and learning in the Basque University System, presented by Dr Eva Fernández de Labastida, Agency for Quality in the Basque University System (Unibasq)
• From imagination to implementation: five lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean, presented by Fernando A. Senior, Ph.D., Quality Matters
• Internal quality assurance in time of crisis, presented by Elena Cirlan, European University Association

DAY 3 Paper presentations

• Ex-ante accreditation of short learning programmes, presented by Esther Huertas, the Catalan University Quality Assurance Agency (AQU Catalunya)
• How external quality assurance can support the HEI’s handling of diversity among students, presented by Steffen Westergard Andersen, Director of Operations, and Rikke Warming, Senior Advisor and Head of Analysis, the Danish Accreditation Institution
• Institutional accreditation working with program accreditations: a scheme adopted in Japan’s university evaluation and accreditation system for its third cycle, presented by Professor Syun Tutiya, National Institution for Academic Degrees and Quality Enhancement of Higher Education, Japan
• Quality enhancement of transnational education in an age of uncertainty: beyond the pandemic, presented by Dr Alison Felce, Ian Welch and Piers Wall, the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA)
• The role of quality assurance in instilling trust to stakeholders (e.g., employers, governments, society at large), presented by Dr Susumu Shibui, National Institution for Academic Degrees and Quality Enhancement of Higher Education, Japan

DAY 4 Paper presentations

• A national and a university approach to ensuring education for sustainable development is embedded within the curriculum, presented by Dr Kate Mori, Quality and Standards Specialist, the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) and Professor Alastair Robertson, Director of Academic Development and Student Learning, Glasgow, Caledonian University
  Embedding Education for Sustainable Development at Glasgow Caledonian University
• Cross agency capacity building: peer learning and building trust, presented by Dr Alison Felce, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (UK) and Dr Mary Catharine Lennon, Postsecondary Education Quality Assessment Board, Ontario, Canada
• Learning analytics for quality assurance in higher education, presented by Rangana Jayashanka, University of Colombo School of Computing, Sri Lanka
• Fostering international trust: three cross-border initiatives led and shared by CDGDC, KHDA and UK NARIC, presented by Dr Fabrizio Trifiro’, Head of Quality Benchmark Services, UK NARIC, Dr Nitesh Sughnani, Director of Higher Education Classification and Rating Framework, Knowledge and Human Development Authority, Li Hongyan, China Academic Degrees and Graduate Education Development Center (CDGDC)
• Reimagining innovation and transnational quality assurance; the case of EUTOPIA, presented by Professor Jo Anguri, University of Warwick

The compilation of all papers presented during INQAAHE Conference 2021 is available here.