“Enhancing Quality Assurance Management in Jordanian Universities”,
EQuAM, is a Structural Measures TEMPUS project number
530616-TEMPUS-1-2012-1-ES-TEMPUS-SMGR(2012–3009/001–001) approved by
the European Commission under grant agreement number
2012-3324/001-001. It is coordinated by University of Barcelona,
Spain.
The wider objective of EQuAM is to improve management of quality
assurance and enhance the capacity of quality assurance bureaus in
universities in Jordan, and aims at assisting the creation of a
model to assess the quality of the Jordanian higher education
system. Principles, priorities, guidelines and procedures will be
produced to support Jordanian higher education institutions and
their Quality Assurance Bureaus, hence improving internal QA in line
with new national higher education accreditation commission (HEAC)
requirements and international expectations. The model will be based
on analyses of needs and capacities in higher education institutions
and the experiences and best practices from the successful QA action
line of the Bologna Process. Workshops, consultations and ‘matching’
exercises will contribute relevant material from Jordanian and
European higher education institutions, QA agencies and consortia.
The model will be piloted in Jordanian higher education institutions
and complemented by training and capacity building to support its
sustainability. European experiences in building productive
relationships between higher education institutions and their QA
agencies will inform the effective implementation of the model and
reflect the importance of autonomous universities meeting national
and international expectations whilst still working in different
contexts. EQuAM is coordinated by University of Barcelona, Spain,
with six universities participating from the Jordanian side:
Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Yarmouk University,
Hashemite University, Mutah University, Al-Hussein Bin Talal
University and Tafila Technical University, in addition to the
Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Higher
Education Accreditation Commission and Association of Arab
Universities. From the European side, EQuAM members are the European
Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, the National
Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation of Spain (ANECA),
the Agency for Quality Assurance in the Catalan University System
(AQU) University of Tallinn, Estonia, University of Rome La Sapienza,
Italy and University Montpellier 1, France.