UNESCO and DAAD provided an online and face to face course for staff working in quality assurance at universities and at external QA organisations from six Southern African countries. Ms. Doris Herrmann, Managing Director at AQAS, felt honoured to be one of the senior experts who functioned as facilitators during the IIEP online course as well as during the conference and training which took place in Botswana.

Ms. Herrmann appreciated the high-level discussions between the African and European senior experts with the participants of the course. It became obvious that although some of the aspects discussed were specific for African Higher Education systems, many challenges are similar in all parts of the world. Some of the questions discussed were: How should the continental African Standards and Guidelines be aligned with regional QA criteria? Which cornerstones are important for implementing national external QA systems? Which benefits and disadvantages do the qualitative versus quantitative QA approaches have?

All participants who successfully completed the training received their certificates in a ceremony at the end of the course. The participants considered the training to be helpful for their everyday business: “We did learn a lot and benefitted immensely. We look forward to further courses and collaboration in the near future. The experience we had during the said event was awesome.

UNESCO/DAAD training course