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.