THEQC Student Commission organizes webinar series entitled “Quality Ambassador Student Meetings”

ANKARA – Between 22 May and 12 June 2020, Turkish Higher Education Quality Council (THEQC) Student Commission organized a webinar series entitled “Quality Ambassador Student Meetings” with the aim of disseminating quality culture and encouraging student participation in the quality assurance of higher education as students are among the most important stakeholders of higher education. Coordinated by THEQC Academic Expert Dr. Gonca Uludağ and moderated by the Student Commission members, the webinar series’ first session themed “Quality in Higher Education: What, How and Why?” was organized on May 22 with the attendance of THEQC President Prof. Dr. Muzaffer Elmas as a guest speaker while the second session “Student Participation in Quality Assurance of Higher Education” and the third session “Quality Assurance in Distance Education” were organized on May 29 and June 5 with the attendance of THEQC Vice President Prof. Dr. Sibel Aksu Yıldırım and THEQC Consultant Prof. Dr. Buket Akkoyunlu as guest speakers respectively. The fourth and last session of the series themed “Student Experiences in External Evaluation Processes” was organized on June 12 with the attendance of master’s student Mehmet Bora and undergraduate student Muhammed İyisan, who were formerly assigned as student members in the evaluation teams of THEQC’s external evaluation processes, undergraduate student Gamze Uyuk who took part in the accreditation processes of the Association for Evaluation and Accreditation of Engineering Programs (MÜDEK) as student member, and PhD student Fatma Ayvat who participated in the accreditation processes of the Health Sciences Education Programs Evaluation and Accreditation Association (SABAK) as student member. 

Attended by the students involved in the quality commissions of higher education institutions, national accreditation agencies and the evaluator pool of THEQC, the series enjoyed a great deal of interest from students. A total of 278 people from 94 higher education institutions registered the webinar series that went on for four weeks. During the sessions, the questions raised by students about quality assurance processes in higher education were answered by the guest speakers. With regard to the event, THEQC Student Member and Student Commission Chair Berk Er pointed out that the series essentially intended to raise awareness on quality among students and offer student perspective to the endeavors in the field of quality assurance in higher education, adding that as students they believe that they have taken a major step towards accomplishing this goal in light of their works and the feedback they received. Berk Er also remarked that the Student Commission is very happy about the interest shown to the webinar series and thanked everyone contributing to the process. 

The video footage of the webinar is available below: