Impact evaluation of EUR-ACE programme accreditation at Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences (Finland)

ABSTRACT

The article reports on a case study of impact evaluation of external quality assurance, i.e. EUR-ACE programme accreditation, which was carried out by the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre at Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences in the form of a methodological before-after comparison. The results show mainly positive and stable attitudes of teachers and students towards quality assurance during the accreditation process and indicate that the university has managed to find a balanced expenditure/benefit ratio with respect to its quality assurance procedures. Another finding is that the involvement of the students in quality assurance as well as to make quality assurance work more relevant for them seems to be one challenge. Particularly, the difference in awareness of the development of the programme between average students and student representatives seems to be substantial. In addition, the data suggests that individual teachers could be more involved in quality assurance.

KEYWORDS:

• Before-after comparison
• external quality assurance
• higher education
• impact evaluation
• programme accreditation

Acknowledgement

The authors did part of the work on this article in the context of a project on impact evaluation of quality assurance in HEIs, which was co-funded by the European Commission (Grant no.: 539481-LLP-1-2013-1-DE-ERASMUSEIGF). This publication reflects the views only of the authors and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jouni A. Jurvelin is a Study Coordinator and Senior Lecturer at the School of Technology of Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences (Finland). He has been involved in several EU projects. He received a PhD (Environmental Sciences) from the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio (Finland) in 2003.

Matti Kajaste is currently working as a Counsellor of Education at the Department for Higher Education and Science Policy of the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture. He worked previously as a Senior Advisor at the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre. He holds an MA from University of St Andrews, Scotland.

Heikki Malinen is the Vice Rector at Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences (Finland). He received his MSc and a PhD from Lappeenranta University of Technology and MBA from University of Jyväskylä. He has been involved in projects at EU level, but also outside EU. He has been chair of the audit team in several university quality audits.

ORCID

Jouni Antero Jurvelin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3717-6187

Matti Kajaste https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4718-3508

Heikki Malinen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7253-4955

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency: [Grant Number 539481-LLP-1-2013-1-DE-ERASMUSEIGF]; co-funded by the European Commission.