The project DEQAR CONNEC

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On December 6-7, 2021 a conference "From Data to Policy – Linking Quality Assurance and Recognition” was held as part of the project DEQAR CONNECT. The conference was held online and involved more than 100 participants: representatives of ministries of education, quality assurance agencies, members of ENIC-NARIC and experts in quality assurance policy in higher education in the EHEA.

The conference was devoted to the issues of integrating the Database of External Quality Assurance Results (DEQAR) in automatic recognition, and connecting DEQAR to the European ecosystems for digital credentials.

Karl Dittrich, EQAR President, Colin Tück, EQAR Director, Marina Cvitanušić Brečić, Head of the Service for Quality of Higher Education at Ministry of Science and Education of Republic of Croatia, and Jolanta Silka, Head of the Latvian Quality Agency for Higher Education, addressed the participants with a welcome speech.

The conference was opened with a presentation by Aleksandra Zhivkovikj, Policy and Project Officer in EQAR, who presented intermediate statistical data on DEQAR. As of December 6, 2021 the DEQAR database comprises about 70 thousand reports from 3 thousand higher education institutions; it also has 43 quality assurance agencies from 23 EHEA systems.

The conference had 4 sessions.

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During the first session devoted to integrating DEQAR in automatic recognition Chiara Finocchietti, CIMEA, Co-Chair of the EHEA TPG on Recognition, Janja Možina Brecelj, Ministry of Education, Science and Sport of Slovenia, and Thomas Blanc de la Carrere, Quality Advisor Internationalisation at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences gave presentations. The experts discussed practical aspects of integrating DEQAR on the governmental and institutional levels.

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During the second session Melinda Szabo, EQAR Senior Policy Analyst, presented summary analytical data on the DEQAR CONNECT project, and how these data are used in developing a quality assurance policy. The final progress report will be made at the end of January, 2022.

The third session had three presentations. Nathan Ono de Carvalho, Maria J. Rosa and Alberto Amaral gave a presentation about the impact of pandemic in cross-border external quality assurance in Europe. Giorgi Munjishvili, Deputy Head of the Planning, Research and International Relations Department, National Center for Educational Quality Enhancement (Georgia), presented an analysis of the cross-border quality assurance of EQAR-registered agencies beyond EHEA. Irina Duma, member of the European Student Union, gave a presentation on automatic recognition through the eyes of students.

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During the fourth session Koen Nomden, Team Leader: Skills and qualifications recognition tools, European Commission, DG for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, Mile Dželalija, University of Split & European University of the Seas (SEA-EU), Lluís Alfons Ariño, Director of the Computer and ICT Service (CIO), Rovira i Virgili University, and Colin Tück, EQAR Director, gave presentations. They discussed the issues of connecting DEQAR to the European ecosystems for digital credentials, and how the ESG are going to be used in the sphere of micro-credentials.

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During the closing panel moderated by Karl Dittrich, EQAR President, all participants highly evaluated the efficiency and importance of the DEQAR database not only as an informational source, but as a future tool for qualification recognition.