Quality Assurance

In May-June 2005, CSS organized a seminar series on quality assurance and accreditation for the Quality Assurance representatives of different Faculties and Departments of Tbilisi State University. The speakers included Dr. Hans Gutbrod, AFP International Fellow; Ms. Barbara Wattendorf, the representative of DAAD in Georgia; and Dr. Lika Glonti, head of the quality assurance service of Tbilisi State University. As a result, every Faculty of TSU now has Quality Assurance Service representatives who are supervising the teaching process in terms of ensuring quality and student-oriented teaching.

CSS spearheaded the introduction of the modern understanding of quality assurance within TSU. The quality assurance system of the graduate programs supervised by CSS went through the stages of peer reviewing of the taught courses as well as overall curriculum of each graduate program. The quality assurance representatives of various Faculties of TSU, including that of Social Sciences went through a rigorous training in designing and implementing quality assurance procedures at their respective Faculties and University at large. The experts of various foreign universities as well as international organizations specializing in higher education conducted workshops in degree structuring and quality assurance. The system of assessment of students’ performance was largely taken from the practice implemented at CSS during the previous academic year.

Under the aegis of CSS, Professor Barry Parsonson of Waikato University designed a model of quality assurance service for the Faculties of Tbilisi State University (including the assessment of quality of teaching and research). Also, he worked out formats of the 4-year undergraduate program in Social Sciences, and of the undergraduate program in Social Work. Please see the related documents by Prof. Parsonson at the end of this text.

In September 2005, Head of Special and Extension programs of Central European University, Dr. Sophie Howlet run seminars for representatives of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences on Quality control and academic degree design issues. The seminar was organized by Academic Fellowship program in cooperation with CSS.

As a result of activities implemented by CSS in the sphere of quality assurance at the university since 2004, institutionalization of the quality assurance office at TSU was supported and the quality asuurance unit for whole university was created.

The work by Prof. Parsonson:

Quality Assurance (QA) Provision in Academic Departments

A Model for the Academic Registry at TSU

Faculty Dean’s Office Staffing

Director Quality, Postgraduate Research and Academic Projects

A Proposed Model of a Social Work Degree for TSU

Researching and Writing a Master’s Thesis