Quality Assurance of Continuing Education Programmes

QACEP is a two-year project which began in October 2009. It is funded with the support of the European Commission under the framework of the Lifelong Learning Programme - Erasmus - Modernisation of Higher Education. The completion of the Project in 2011 was marked by the publication of a manual for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).  

Aims and Objectives 

The QACEP project  aims to focus on specific issues in the Quality Assurance of Higher Education Institutions’ Continuing Education Programmes. The starting point of the is to consider, on one hand, the overall need to include HEIs' advanced continuing education courses in evaluation process to verify their quality just like for mainstream courses and, on the other hand, the concrete constraints HEIs have to face to respond to this challenge. In fact in implementing quality assurance systems for continuing education courses, HEIs find some difficulties, because - as the field of advanced continuing education is at the intersection between university, professional practice and general vocational continuing education and training – these programmes are characterised by features which in some cases differ substantially from mainstream courses.

The main objectives to be achieved are to develop a general framework for Quality Assurance of Continuing Education Programmes offered by Higher Education Institutions and to elaborate concrete and practical tools for their quality assessment. The envisaged final results are conceived to support HEIs, on the strategic and management levels, as well as on the programme level, to start and increase the Quality Assurance (QA) systems of their continuing education programmes by taking advantage of a general framework, operational indications and guidelines for technical solutions and a set of concrete examples.

Consortium 

The Consortium is composed of eight institutions (five Higher Education Institutions and a Foundation attached to an University with a broad experience in the field of QA and/or in Continuing Education Programmes and two associations representing a large number of other HEIs universities), namely:

• Aalto University Professional Development (Aalto PRO)
• Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna
• Coimbra Group
• Consorzio Interuniversitario AlmaLaurea
• Fundació Privada Institut de Formació Continua de la UB (IL3-UB)
• Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.Leuven)
• University College of Cork (UCC)
• Uniwersytet Warszawski (UW)