Workshop on Development of Sectorial Qualifications Frameworks and Coordination Meeting in Osnabruck
On 2-5 November, a workshop on “Development of Sectorial Qualifications Frameworks for Armenian HE” and on 6th of November, 2015 a coordination meeting were held in Osnabruck University of Applied Sciences, Germany. The Workshop was attended by 35 representatives from Armenian HEIs and educational institutions from Armenia and 8 representatives from EU partner Universities. The main aim of the Workshop was to introduce the EU experience on the development of Sectorial Qualifications Frameworks, methodologies and linking them to National Qualifications Frameworks. The final outcome of the Workshop was the first drafts of the Sectorial Qualifications Frameworks in 5 Subject areas, namely: Education, Law, Physics, Agriculture and Civil Engineering.
Mr. Janerik Lundquist/Linkoping University/ welcomed the representatives from the Armenian higher education institutions and stakeholder organizations of the ARMENQA project, thus launching the 4-day training on Sectorial Qualifications Frameworks/ SQF/ and the Coordination Meeting. Mr. Armen Budaghyan/ YSU/ introduced the agenda for four days, provided some practical and technical information, distributed materials for the training.
The training was launched with the presentation and information provided on behalf of National Qualifications Authority of Romania represented by Catalin Silvestru. He introduced the Romanian experience of developing and implementing the National Qualifications Framework.
The second day of the training started with the presentations from the University of Ghent represented by Fabienne Bossuyt and Bruno Vandecasteele. They have presented their experience in the development of SQF in European Studies. During the presentations the following topics were introduced:
• Flemish Qualifications structure
• Sectorial learning outcomes (SLO)
• Programme-specific learning outcomes (PLO)
• Relation between SLOs and PLOs
• Flemish Secrorial learning outcomes for the Master program in European Studies.
• Afterwards, Mr. Janerik Lundquist briefly introduced the alignment between European Qualifications Framework (EQF), NQF and SQFs, as well as the role of SQFs for Universities.
• Mr. Volker Gehmlich/ Osnabrück University/ made a short introduction on strategies and methodologies of developing SQFs in Germany, as well as provided some recommendations for the groups to assist in writing the SQF for the specific sectors (i.e. Law, Physics, Education, Civil Engineering and Agriculture).
Later, the participants were split into 5 groups according their subject areas (i.e. Law, Physics, Education, Civil Engineering and Agriculture) to prepare the draft version of SQF descriptors in terms of knowledge, skills and competence for Bachelor and Master Levels. Each subgroup had a facilitator, an expert from the European partner universities, who provided the necessary assistance to the group by sharing his experience. First drafts were developed during two day workshop and it was agreed to finalize the formulation of learning outcomes later in Armenia.
At the end of the last seminar day everybody was thanked for being actively involved in the discussions and having a fruitful and productive training. Furthermore, each participant was awarded a Certificate of attendance.
The Coordination meeting was led by the Coordinator of ARMENQA Project Professor Janerik Lundquist from Linkoping University and the local Coordinators of the Project Mr. Armen Budaghyan from Yerevan State University and Kristina Tsaturyan from the Armenian State Pedagogical University.
The meeting was summed up by Mr. Janerik Lundquist, Mr. Volker Gehmlich, Mr. Armen Budaghyan and Ms. Kristina Tsaturyan. Partners thanked everybody for the active and fruitful participation, especially German partners for the perfectly organized training and meeting.