Hochschulweiterbildung@BW project - as part of Baden-Württemberg's continuing education campaign WEITER.mit.BILDUNG@BW - kept EVALAG busy at various levels throughout 2024: In addition to 22 certification procedures at 16 different universities and continuing education institutions in Baden-Württemberg, EVALAG supported university members with various exchange and networking events as well as continuing education programmes on different aspects of academic continuing education. EVALAG accompanied the project with focus group interviews with university members from all areas and gained interesting qualitative insights.
As an added value of the certification procedures and the associated awarding of seals, the opportunity to deal with quality assurance processes has repeatedly emerged - already in the course of the project, but especially when looking back on the procedures carried out. In this way, important reflection processes could be initiated, the development and performance of the organisation could be advanced and transparency and comparability could be created through the standardisation of quality assurance. This not only has advantages within the organisation, but also represents a competitive advantage.
The Hochschulweiterbildung@BW project will now come to an end on 31 December 2024. To mark this occasion, EVALAG organised a conference on 5 and 6 December 2024 on the topic of "Quality in academic and artistic continuing education - stakeholders, organisations, society" at the Heidelberg Congress Center with around 180 participants to exchange views on various aspects of quality - with perspectives from Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
After a digital greeting from State Secretary Arne Braun and a welcoming speech from Professor Heike Bühler (both from the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts), the first day of the conference continued with two keynote speeches: Professor Dr Tina Seufert from the School of Advanced Professional Studies (SAPS) at Ulm University and Ulm University of Applied Sciences and Chair of the Higher Education@BW project advisory board gave the first speech on the exciting topic of "From university to practice: academic continuing education as the key to successful knowledge transfer". Florian Rampelt from the Stifterverband was able to build a bridge to his keynote speech "Future skills, artificial intelligence, microcredentials: What potential is there for continuing academic education?" by addressing the topic of digitalisation and the use of AI in continuing academic education.
Professor Dr Annika Maschwitz from Bremen University of Applied Sciences, Chair of the German Association for Continuing and Distance Learning (DGWF), kicked off the second day with her keynote speech "Quality assurance and development in continuing academic education: In the field of tension between market requirements and academic standards".
At the end of our conference, Dr Sabine Felder (swissuniversities), Professor Dr Monika Gross (formerly HRK and Berlin University of Applied Sciences), Jan Ihwe (DGWF, Hochschulweiterbildung@BW and University of Freiburg) and University Professor Dr Peter Schlögl (AUCEN and University of Klagenfurt) discussed the topic of "Needs, strategies, futures - current and future perspectives for academic and artistic continuing education in German-speaking and European countries".
Another special highlight of the conference was the awarding of certificates to universities and continuing education institutions from Baden-Württemberg that were certified or had their continuing education programmes certified as part of Hochschulweiterbildung@BW.
In numerous parallel sessions with lectures and workshops, there were many opportunities for exciting discussions and dialogue among the participants. Many interesting, exciting and enlightening impulses, insights and perspectives were gained in the context of quality in academic and artistic continuing education. In order to ensure that these have a lasting effect, EVALAG will publish a conference volume in the series "Higher Education in Theory and Practice" next year.
Information on the project Hochschulweiterbildung@BW can be found on our website. You can find out more about our conference on the conference website.