Culture of Quality
Mission statement
The member organisations active in ASIIN, voluntary experts and full-time staff share the following conviction:
A good academic education is the basis for a sustainable development of modern societies.
ASIIN understands "education" as a development- and learning process for the acquisition of diverse competences and as its result. The educational outcome supports the successful shaping of personal, social and professional life.
Our goals
That is why we pursue our goals nationally and internationally,
- to ensure and strengthen the quality of academic education.
- to create transparency regarding the achieved quality in academic education and continuous education, in order to promote academic and professional mobility.
Our approach
We achieve these goals by
- supporting providers and systems of academic education and continuing education nationally and internationally
especially through accreditation and certification, evaluation, consulting and training in quality- and organisational development, through the voluntary participation of experts from science and professional practice in our non-profit activities.
Understanding of Quality
Our understanding of quality in the sense of strategic goals, including principles, fields of activity, quality expectations and instruments of quality management, are documented in a policy paper (QM manual).
The internal quality work at ASIIN follows the logic of the TQM approach (Total Quality Management).
Accordingly, the cyclical understanding should be integrated into everyday processes as well as into organisational and product development projects.
The instruments of quality work should be easily and directly accessible for the employees in their respective tasks and functions.
Principles and fields of activity of our quality work
The principles of objectivity, validity, confidentiality and transparency guide our actions in all product/service areas of the association and Consult GmbH.
The quality expectations we have of ourselves derived from these principles relate in particular to
- The quality of the expert pool with whom we work
- The quality of the criteria and procedural principles we apply.
- The quality in the application of our criteria and procedural principles. This includes the efficiency and effectiveness of procedures.
- Third-party recognition of the achieved results.
Thematic analyses
ASIIN's goal is to ensure and strengthen the national and international quality of academic education. In order to meet this responsibility, we have established a comprehensive system of (internal) quality management which illuminates and critically examines our own accreditation practices. In addition to the QM Handbook, this includes, among other things, policy papers, ASIIN's participatory structures and regularly organised national and international conferences.
ASIIN continuously analyses its accreditation practices (especially within the decision-making processes of the expert committees and accreditation commissions) and publishes relevant results in a series of impact studies. Thus, ASIIN fulfils the requirement of the European Standards and Guidelines to conduct thematic analyses of its working methods. These thematic analyses serve to evaluate the basic mode of operation of ASIIN’s accreditation activities, to enable critical reflection and discussion and to contribute to the improvement of quality management in a national and international context.
In the following, you will find a list of distinct studies, reports and presentations, which will be updated continuously.
- Analytical report on the ASIIN activities for assessing quality in higher educational institutions of the Republic of Kazаkhstan, ASIIN e.V., April 2021
- Study on the Impact of ASIIN’s Programme Accreditation in the Field of Mechanical Engineering and Process Engineering, ASIIN e.V., March 2021
- Thematische Analyse “Systemakkreditierung”, ASIIN e.V., November 2020
- Study on the Impact of ASIIN’s Programme Accreditation in the Field of Engineering and Management, ASIIN e.V., September 2020
- Thematic Analysis - International Accreditation in Higher Education in Saudi Arabia, ASIIN e.V., June 2020
- Study on the Impact of ASIIN's Accreditation Programme, ASIIN e.V., September 2018
- Hermes, Siegfried (2017), Wege aus dem Stimmungstief, in: Jan Wiarda Blog (Weblog), 4. Oktober 2017
- Newsletter 14 and Newsletter 15 with contributions about the reform of the German Accreditation System by Iring Wasser and Siegfried Hermes
- Newsletter 13 with a thematic focus on Double Degree programmes
- Newsletter 12 about the challenges of external quality assurance through the internationalisation of universities
- Newsletter 11 with a thematic focus on orientation towards learning outcomes