After the three-day workshop with the ‘Drafting Group’ of Azerbaijani higher education experts from the Ministry of Education and Universities in Quba, the Ministry of Education invited an Advisory Group comprised of Azerbaijani higher education institutions’ vice rectors, senior officers and experts to discuss with Finnish and Estonian quality assurance experts a modified version of the pilot evaluation manual, which is the outcome of the Quba workshop. The new version covering the structure and content of the assessment areas was rapidly translated into Azerbaijani. The meeting bringing together 30 participants took place in the Azerbaijan Technical University.

Agenda of the Advisory Group meeting, 1 June 2016

Mr. Sülhaddin Gözalov, Opening of the Advisory Group Meeting

Mr. Afgan Abdullayev, Senior Advisor at Regulatory Legal Documents Unit, Ministry of Education External QA: current state of affairs and recommendations for improvement

Mr. Reijo Aholainen, EHEA Twinning Project, Azerbaijan Support to the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Azerbaijan for further adherence of the higher education system to the European Higher Education Area

Ms. Helka Kekäläinen, MS Senior Project Leader, FINEEC Piloting Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance of Higher Education in Azerbaijan - AzSG

Ms. Heli Mattisen, MS Junior Project Leader, Director and Chief Executive of EKKA Drafting the AzSG

Mr. Tofig Ahmadov, Senior Advisor at Higher and Secondary Special Education Department and Mr. Afgan Abdullayev, Senior Advisor, Ministry of Education Presentation of draft AzSG and discussions

Discussions

 

In the discussion after the presentations, the Advisory Group members criticized the complexity of the standards and the extensive number of the criteria. Several concrete proposals were presented, such as focusing more on internationalisation, or leaving some criteria, e.g. funding, out of the pilot evaluation criteria, etc. The European experts underlined the feasibility of the enhancement lead approach in pilot evaluations and of the need to consider different types of external evaluations. The European experts concluded that there is further need to inform and train Azerbaijan universities’ senior staff and officials on quality evaluations methods and skills, in particular the enhancement lead approach. The Twinning project aims to provide further seminars and trainings to the Azerbaijan senior officials and experts, in particular to the pilot institutions in autumn 2016.

The Twinning Office will publish the preliminary draft manual for pilot evaluations in both language versions on the EHEA Twinning website (www.ehea.edu.az ) in order to get written feedback about the assessment areas and criteria. The feedback is needed not only on the point of view of the evaluation manual of the pilot universities, but also on the point of view of the future Azerbaijan external and internal quality assurance systems, their scope, objectives and criteria. The Twinning project and the Ministry of Education aim to invite the Advisory Group, the pilot universities and other stakeholders to another common seminar to discuss and agree on the by then updated version of the manual and the evaluation criteria at the end of August 2016. 

•