An understanding of the higher education context in which quality assurance agencies operate is an essential foundation for the design of good quality assurance practices and accountability. This module, as the title suggests, sets out to introduce you to the trends in higher education at a time when national boundaries are melting away and the world has become more globalised than it has ever been.
This module highlights the complexity of the concept of quality and the various Quality Assurance frameworks and processes used to define and measure quality. The focus is on external quality assurance (EQA) agencies, that is, systems external to Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and their internal QA systems.