On October 13, 2021 the CEENQA General Assembly Meeting took place. It started with a substantial workshop on “Online evaluations and external quality assurance”, attentively moderated by Board Member of CEENQA and also NAQA Advisory Board Member Dr. Olgun Cicek.
During the workshop participants were sharing their experiences of online evaluations, analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of it and pointing and sorting out issues and future challenges.
NAQA Vice-Head Nataliia Stukalo made a precise presentation on QA in Pandemic Times, where she described the lessons learnt by NAQA during the period of March 2020 till September 2021. She provided NAQA statistics of conducted accreditations, which showed the significant prevalence of online accreditation compared to traditional face-to-face accreditations (2500 vs 400). As for Ukraine conditions, video conferencing proved to save time and financial resources, but it also made it difficult for experts to make a proper impression of the university’s spirit. In addition, the results are indicating a great positive impact of online experience on improving digital competencies. It is directly linked to the NAQA work on providing additional trainings, QA sessions and explanations for all the stakeholders.
Nataliia Stukalo mentioned the issues regarding Cross-Border QA in pandemic times, such as the risk of not strong HEIs misleading the international agencies, in order to get accreditation. She stressed the importance of consulting with the local agencies before making the final decision.
The major topic of the workshop discussion was the question of recording the online procedures. Participants had contrasting views and opinions on this concern, which differ depending also on each country’s rules and legislation. Talking about Ukraine’s point of view, Nataliia Stukalo spoke about the importance of transparency for NAQA and Ukrainian higher education in general, which could be ensured by the help of recording.