ShareAbout thirty students participate in the AQU Catalunya course on guaranteeing university quality
Organised in collaboration with the CEUCAT, the aim of the course was to train students to enable them to participate in the internal quality assurance processes of universities and in AQU Catalunya's external assessment processes.
On Saturday, AQU Catalunya held the course ‘Training for Students in University Quality Assurance’, which was attended by around thirty students from different Catalan universities. The seminar, which was held at the Agency's headquarters, was attended by the Director of AQU Catalunya, Jaume Valls Pasola, who opened the session alongside Pau Maza, general coordinator of the Catalan University Student Council (CEUCAT), the body with which the Agency co-organised this training course.
AQU Catalunya and the CEUCAT organised this course to train students in the Catalan university system in quality assurance. The course was aimed at providing students with useful tools to participate in the internal quality assurance processes of their universities and also in the external assessment processes carried out by AQU Catalunya. In addition, the training also aimed to provide an overview of the latest developments in quality assurance, both from an international and local perspective.
Lectures and workshops were offered during the course, which took a theoretical and practical approach. The first talk, given by Pau Maza, contextualised quality assurance in the context of the European Higher Education Area. Subsequently, Tamara Ciobanu, a student member of the Executive Committee of the European Students' Union (ESU), gave a talk on Student participation on an international scale. This was followed by the presentation on Quality assurance in higher education in Catalonia, which was given by three AQU Catalunya staff members: Albert Gili, Albert Basart and Núria Mancho.
The theoretical part of the day concluded with the round table on Internal Quality Assurance Systems (IQAS) and student involvement, moderated by the head of the Quality Assurance Department, Esther Huertas, with the participation of the retired lecturer and former vice-rector of university policy at the Technical University of Catalonia, Antoni Ras, the quality technician at the Faculty of Law of the University of Barcelona, Berta Roca, and the student representative of the Faculty of Education, Psychology and Social Work of the University of Lleida, Maria Jaques.
During the practical part of the course in the afternoon, two workshops were held in order to apply the contents covered in the morning. The first session was entitled Writing student reports for the accreditation of institutions and was given by Paula Gelpí, a student representative from the Pere Tarrés Faculty at Ramon Llull University (URL) and a member of the AQU Catalunya Student Committee. Albert Basart, coordinator of the AQU Catalunya Quality Assessment Department, gave the second course, entitled Higher Education Assessment, which focused on the assessment of higher education degrees. Finally, the project manager of the Quality Assessment Department and secretary of the AQU Catalunya Student Committee, Albert Gili, explained the independent work that needs to be done to complete the course.
Students who complete the project after the course receive a certificate, certifying 25 hours of dedication, which they can present to their universities in order to obtain a free-elective credit if the regulations of their schools allow it. AQU Catalunya and CEUCAT plan to organise new courses for students in the future that will be announced on our social networks.