On 5 November 2018, the Executive Board made an intended decision on the quality agreements in education that will be reached with the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) in response to the sector agreement on investing in the quality of education (Investeren in Onderwijskwaliteit, April 2018).
The NVAO* asks to explain how the plan on quality agreements relate with existing ambitions and vision on education. Because faculties, within the setting of the university, might have varying ambitions on education, it is desirable to incorporate an explanation of this diversity into the UT plan. At UT level, the faculty plans have been converted into five programmes in which efforts are being made to improve education quality:
- Learning facilities
- Teaching professionalization
- Community building
- Talent development of students
- Global citizens
Development process quality agreements of Engineering Technology
At a Kick-off meeting in March 2018 representatives of all gremia came together to make an inventory of wishes and requirements of quality improvements for each programme of ET. Based on these inventories a lunch-meeting with student associations was organized to get more input. This additional input was also discussed in the different OLC meetings and eventually turned into an advisory report for the OLD’s. Other boards were constantly updated about the process. We have opted for this approach, especially to hear from students how they want to improve the quality of their education.
Planning of actions
Given the NVAO timeline there will be two moments on which the realisation of the intentions are assessed: 1) a mid-term assessment in 2022 based on the progress until 2021 and, 2) a final evaluation based on the results until 2024.
Faculties are asked to specify in detail what they intend to accomplish in 2021 and to describe in more general term what the intended outcomes are for 2024. In order to evaluate the progress on quality agreements upcoming years, it is important to have a frame of reference. Therefore, faculties are asked to describe the current situation as mentioned under the heading of the five programme.
*NVAO: De Nederlands-Vlaamse Accreditatieorganisatie (The Dutch-Flemish Accreditation Organization)