The Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance and Career Development

the Fourth Quality Assurance Forum was held in Copenhagen24.11.09

On 19-21, November, 2009, the Fourth Quality Assurance Forum was held in Copenhagen, Danemark where the representatives of AQA took an active part. The theme of the 4th Quality Assurance Forum is “Creativity and Diversity: Challenges for quality assurance beyond 2010”. The main goal of this event was to provide a discussion forum centred on how current internal and external quality assurance approaches take account of institutional diversity and support creativity and innovative practices in higher education. Through plenary and parallel sessions, the discussions framed these issues in the context of the ongoing construction of the European Higher Education Area. The specific objectives of this fourth forum were: • To gain an understanding of how higher education institutions and QA agencies’ quality procedures and practices take into account the diversity of institutional missions and profiles • To explore how internal and external quality assurance processes may stimulate or hinder creativity and innovative practices in higher education. In the rapidly changing higher education environment and with increased internationalisation, the diversity of European higher education institutions’ missions and profiles ensures knowledge creation as well as social and economic development through creative responses to complex questions. At the same time, there is a growing demand to ensure the quality of the education offered by higher education institutions and to promote transparency.