The Quality Assurance Academy is a comprehensive programme for business schools’ quality assurance professionals. It focuses on developing leadership competencies and managerial skills to meet the diverse professional challenges encountered daily in quality assurance/quality management (QA/QM) work in business schools.
The QAA cuts across all major quality assurance frameworks to develop and refine the participants’ understanding of the underlying methodologies and their purpose. Therefore, it is seen as a general qualification opportunity rather than training to support a specific accreditation project. The QAA is offered to the EFMD members and the wider business school community.
Any quality assurance professional, either currently employed or in between jobs. The design has been built around the needs of business schools, but professionals filling similar roles on the university level or in other faculties are most welcome to apply as well. No restrictions have been set regarding seniority and experience, but the typical applicant will have up to three years of QA-specific experience.
The QAA represents a unique opportunity to develop the competencies necessary to lead and manage a quality assurance agenda of a business school with international ambitions while being cognisant of national/cultural constraints. The offer is built around key skills a quality assurance professional should have, in addition to deep insights into the mechanics of delivering management education.
Specifically, participants will improve and enhance their capacity:
After successfully completing the programme, participants will receive the “Certified Quality Assurance Professional” certificate from EFMD Global. It will serve as a professional distinction, signalling the bearer’s qualification to conduct quality assurance work in tertiary education.
Graduation is based on two intermediate assessments: the capstone assessment and the overall point score received.
STRUCTURE OF THE PROGRAMME
The QAA consists of three block weeks, each of which includes two modules of four hours (five hours including breaks) and one extra module the week after. It emphasises leadership training with insights into strategy and change management techniques (Modules 1 and 6) as well as core quality management skills with a focus on analysing the writing process and communication with a look at rankings (Modules 2 and 5). The programme is complemented by training sessions in project management (Module 3) and data/information management (Module 4), with a newly added module about crisis management.
Each block week will require approximately a half-day of preparatory work. Participants will need to invest the same amount of time in completing the intermediate assessments after block weeks one and two. The capstone assessment after block week three will involve approximately two days of work and will be customised around a current professional challenge the participant is facing.
This workshop will be run using Zoom. For Zoom to work best, we recommend downloading the latest version of Zoom Client for Meetings. If you are not familiar with Zoom, please make sure to connect 15 minutes before the meeting. You can test the tool via this website.
