The first study programme accreditations were completed by NAQA in December 2019 and January 2020. About 35% of study programmes were granted conditional accreditation just for one year. These study programmes got experts’ recommendations how to improve and if they manage to do so, they can apply for full accreditation in a year. 10 out of 360 programmes were not accredited as they don’t meet some NAQA accreditation criteria.
These first accreditations have also demonstrated some gaps in the procedures and issues in NAQA criteria interpretation by accreditation and subject area experts. In order to fulfill the gaps in the procedures NAQA has developed a number of suggestions how to improve the Regulation on Accreditation. In January NAQA has also conducted some surveys among all stakeholders (Universities administration, representatives of the study programmes, accreditation experts, subject-area experts) and identified the key problems and questions to be addressed.
As a result of the questionnaires findings, case studies analysis and social media feedback it was decided to conduct a series of methodical seminars in five largest Ukrainian cities – Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Odesa, Lviv. The NAQA Head Serhiy Kvit, Vice-Heads Nataliia Stukalo, Andrii Butenko, Olena Yeremenko, Ivan Nazarov and the Head of NAQA Secretariat Michailo Wynnyckyj were the key speakers, used interactive Mentimeter presentations and answered questions. More then 1000 experts have participated these seminars between January 22 and February 3.
The seminars aimed to ensure self-reflection and to make corrections in procedures and criteria application. The speakers made specific focus on the consistency of the accreditation expertize and evaluation, its results verification and further validation; discussed the problems of common understanding and interpretation of the accreditation criteria; answered experts’ questions. It was also stressed that experts should make consultative evaluation and develop useful recommendations for the study programme improvement, pay attention to academic integrity policy and student centered approach implementation.
Self-evaluation and continuous improvement are the key NAQA principles, so such self-reflective events and activities will be conducted by the Agency of the constant basis.
