Project Description

Quality assurance (QA) is a major component in the Lebanese modernization agenda. With an important increase in volume and diversity, the Lebanese higher education (HE) faces several challenges making a clear QA system necessary. In this context, numerous Lebanese higher education institutions (HEIs) have already gone through a complete QA process with foreign QA agencies. Lately, a draft law for the establishment of a Lebanese Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education has been drafted.

This agency would satisfy the expectations in curso power bi terms of accountability and continuous improvement of the HE system. Against this backdrop, the project aims to experiment some tools that may be used by this agency. Based on an analysis of the Lebanese context done by the Lebanese partners a model for QA will be established with the support of the European partners. This model will be discussed with the Lebanese Higher Education (LHE) stakeholders at large.

Based on the established quality assurance model a set of standards and procedures will be drafted for the evaluation of the institutions. In order to conduct those evaluations, experts from Lebanon and from abroad are needed. Criteria for the selection of the experts will be identified and some experts will be appointed. Training materials provided by the European partners will be customized to the Lebanese context and will serve to train the selected experts. The experts will also go to Europe for some tour studies. Finally, a pilot evaluation of few Lebanese institutions will be performed.

By the end of the project, well accepted and tested standards and procedures will be available and could be directly used by the Lebanese agency. Experts selection criteria and training materials for the experts will also exist and some trained experts will be operational. Finally, the project, targeting and involving the whole LHE system, will strongly enhance the quality culture with a good understanding of accountability and continuous improvement concepts.

The TLQAA project is formed of the following workpackages: