Contents

Consortium

Project has been finished

The Final report has been submitted by mid-March 2013 (see the Documents).

 

Latest News

April 20th, 2013

The Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at University of Belgrade has submitted the applications for accreditation to ASIIN in November 2012. Instead of only one course (specialisation) as promised for the project, 22 modules (specialisations) under the same common master program name have been submitted, as summarized below:

The peers of ASIIN have visited UB-FME for two days (February 26-27, 2013) and announced their positive decision (preliminary report of the peers received on April 11, 2013 to which UB-FME is preparing improvements), which is to be confirmed by the agency and officially declared on June 28th, 2013.

The GUC has submitted the applications for accreditation to ACQUIN. Two courses’ syllabi catalogues namely:

Due to instable situation in Egypt, ACQUIN was postponing the peers visit, and finally scheduled it for 8th or 15th of July, 2013.

 

Project Framework

The overall objective of this project is to enhance the quality and relevance of higher education in engineering area in partner countries and to reach the integration of partner country universities into the European university system by international accreditation of engineering studies.

Strictly aiming to fulfill defined priorities for partner countries (both national and programme-wide, identical priorities numbered 1, 2 and 3), the project has an overall combined objective in three fields:

1. Governance reform (University management and student services) where EU established standards for institution excellence are to be introduced in at least one partner country allowing for international accreditation of such an organized institution. It is to be expected that institutional current management system is to be substantially improved, as well student organization and services, especially towards international recognition and integration in uniform EU education area. This outcome is very important concerning the promotion of quality control culture and criteria needed for further steps.

2. Accreditation process for the institution (step 1) is obligatorily accompanied by Curricula reform (Modernisation of curricula) and this projects targets on at least two pilot projects, both interdisciplinary and already established by EU-partner universities. Partner countries are required to introduce, conduct and modernise appropriate curricula in such a way that this would result in a very concrete outcome - its international accreditation. This will most probably also result in issuing of double (multiple) diploma which would allow partner countries students to be immediately ready for EU labour market.

3. Activities in steps 1 and 2 will naturally have to incorporate Development of partnerships with enterprises, especially concerning EU standards for student internships and mobility, which is extremely important for engineering studies. The lack of more practical approach to studies (in partner country studies, due to weaker industry development, studies are more theoretically oriented, so curricula has to be modernised also for these reasons) and skill unsufficiency of partner country students (as comapred to EU-partners students) has to be significantly improved. This directly contributes to the relation between Higher education and society, since it is expected that EU transfer of know-how will allow for Training courses of national accreditation authorities and staff (current national accreditation rules do not insist on skill praxis too much), as well as for university and faculty leaders in partner countries..

Project goals

By this project the partner country universities ought to accomplish:

1) Internal quality assurance and enhancement mechanisms based on the best international practice;

2) A new model of flexible curriculum structure taking into account emerging interdisciplinary engineering areas and enabling the recognition of new professional qualifications;

3) Improvement of laboratory, library, learning and teaching facilities as well as development of partnership with enterprises;

4) Improvement of administrative/student services including logistic support for university internationalization,

5) Indispensable curriculum corrections, and

6) International accreditation of at least two study programs with the German ASIIN as a relevant European Accreditation Agency.