Educational experts discuss internal quality assurance system design, development

The AUN Internal Quality Assurance (IQA) System Design and Development workshop was organised by the Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), the ASEAN University Network (AUN) Secretariat, and the Vietnam National University-HCM City (VNU-HCM) from April 24 to 26 at the VNU-HCM.

The workshop aims to pilot the AUN IQA System, develop the AUN IQA system as the core output with a working Tool-Kit to be customised and adapted for future uses under co-ownership between the Ministry of Education and Training and AUN, and build a community of practitioners of the AUN IQA system and knowledge portal.

It organised three sessions of small-group discussions with three main topics; Vietnamese higher education sector - Towards world-class standards; Making an IQA system that works - Generating changes for Vietnamese higher education; and Way forward for Vietnamese higher education institutions.

Ngo Thi Phuong Lan, rector of the HCM City University of Social Sciences and Humanities under VNU-HCM, said the first two higher education institutions in Vietnam, VNU-Hanoi and VNU-HCM, were official members of the AUN in 1999.

Up to now, the AUN-QA quality assurance community in the country has 44 associate members.

“The workshop will pave the way for the future cooperation of the AUN-QA quality assurance community,” she said.

Choltis Dhirathiti, executive director of AUN, said through the working sessions, experts and educational managers will understand the current status of IQA systems and practices in Vietnam’s higher education sector, evaluate the experiences of AUN-QA practices in both AUN core members and AUN-QA associate members, and conduct a gap analysis specifically in the area of quality management and quality assurance/enhancement with inputs from AUN members and AUN-QA associate member universities.

The workshop creates a good opportunity for Vietnamese educational managers and universities to design and develop AUN-QA IQA systems based on the inputs from, and not limited to, AUN-QA experiences, regional and international, through benchmarking and learning from the mature system of IQA from international and regional perspectives including Europe, Australia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

“Hence, they could transform the whole IQA system mechanisms and practices in the higher education institutions in Vietnam, and establish good practices to pilot IQA systems development in the country,” he said.

Besides that, the enhanced policies, strategies, and rules and regulations that foster the long-term perspective for the development of IQA in the country are expected to be established.

Advanced IQA System set up, development, and taking a firm root in Vietnam through behavioural changes in the community of practitioners, as well as structural and policy changes instilled in the IQA culture within the country’s higher education sector, are also expected outcomes.