Quality Assurance and Qualifications Frameworks: Exchanging Good Practice. ENQA Workshop Report 21
Author: Blomqvist, Carita
Date: 2012-00-00
Type: Collected Works - Proceedings
Subjects: Prior Learning,Quality Control,Stakeholders,Foreign Countries,Workshops,Best Practices,Quality Assurance,Educational Development,Educational Policy,Qualifications,Agency Role,Certification,Institutional Evaluation,Case Studies,Recognition (Achievement),Accreditation (Institutions),Academic Standards,Outcome Measures,Communities of Practice,Knowledge Management

The theme of qualifications frameworks and their relation to quality assurance is gaining urgency in the European scene as more and more countries are completing their national qualifications frameworks and quality assurance agencies need to take important decisions on how to implement them. Some of the key features of the qualifications frameworks are the specification of learning outcomes, processes for assessing learners' attainment of the expected outcomes, their relation to the ECTS, identification of transfer and progression routes, and recognition of prior learning. ENQA wanted to respond to the need of agencies to address the issue by providing a forum for exchange of experience and methods in implementation of qualifications frameworks and for a discussion on what these changes mean for the work of the agencies. The workshop from which this publication is an outcome of took place in Dublin on 9-10 February 2012. The workshop picked up and took forward work that ENQA had done in this area in the past years, and in particular since a workshop in 2007 on qualifications frameworks and workshop in 2010 on learning outcomes. This current publication presents seven articles covering themes such as the state of development of qualifications frameworks, the role of agencies in the self-certification process, and the meaning of qualifications frameworks in external quality assurance. In addition, an article presenting the view of the labour market sector on qualifications frameworks provides depth to the range of views provided. Also recognition of prior learning, assessment of learning outcomes, and qualifications frameworks and learning outcomes in programme oriented quality assurance are addressed by this publication. Articles included in this paper are: (1) Qualifications Frameworks in the European Higher Education Area: The State of Development and Perspectives for the Future (Carita Blomqvist); (2) The Role of Quality Assurance Agencies in the Self-Certification of Compatibility of NQFS with the QF-EHEA (Bryan Maguire); (3) Role and Meaning of Qualifications Frameworks in External Quality Assurance (Karin Jarplid Linde); (4) Quality Assurance and Qualifications Frameworks: A Stakeholder View (Tony Donohoe); (5) Qualifications Frameworks and Learning Outcomes in Programme Oriented Quality Assurance--A Brief Story of Denmark, and a Few International Comments (David Metz); (6) Recognition of Prior Learning and the Role of Quality Assurance Agencies. Accreditation of Prior Learning in France as a Case Study (Teresa Sanchez Chaparro); and (7) Assessment of Learning Outcomes: The Case of ANECA (Rafael Llavor). ENQA Workshop--Quality Assurance and Qualifications Frameworks: Exchanging good practice is appended. Individual articles contain references. (Contains 26 footnotes.)