Our Quality Management

Assuring the Quality of our Procedures and Internal Processes:

As an Accreditation Agency, we see as our mission the promotion of quality, transparency and comparability in higher education and science. Therefore, we develop adequate methods and instruments, define guidelines and use them in all our procedures.

We are geared to the principles of value orientation, target orientation and conformity with norms and standards. We take into consideration the general requirements of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) and of the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR). We also take account of the national standards defined by the German Accreditation Council.

By anchoring our internal quality management in our daily activities, every member of the staff is truly familiar with our concept of quality and brings it into action.

All our activities are based on the PDCA-Circle with the four phases „Plan – Do – Check – Act“:

Figure 1: The four phases of plan, do, check and act.

As a first step, activities are planned and scheduled, then they are executed; afterwards, processes are checked and finally, if necessary, further action will be taken. Quality checks and subsequent reactions affect the next planning phase: the loop system is closed (see chart 1).

The satisfaction of our customers, reviewers and members of our committees plays an important role in our understanding of quality. Thus, we check continuously our criteria, procedures and internal processes through mutual evaluations.

Who evaluates?	Who is evaluated?	How often?

Assessor	Project manager, office, workflow of procedure	After decision of the responsible committee
HEIs, other providers of continuing education	Reviewer, project manager, office, workflow of procedure	After decision of the responsible committee
Participants of workshops	Trainer	After each workshop
Members of Committees	Office, documents, division manager, workflow of meetings	Annually

With these measures, all service areas of FIBAA are continuously evaluated. The results are summarised in an annual quality report and are discussed internally in order to reach further improvements. Furthermore, a quality team consisting of representatives of all relevant areas discusses the outcomes of the evaluations and feeds them into the further development of our procedures and processes.

The aggregated results of the evaluations of accreditations and certifications are annually published in the quality management report.

Here you will find the current quality report and the quality reports of recent years:

The results of the evaluations of FIBAA Consult events are published on the website of FIBAA Consult (only available in German language). If necessary, we conduct special evaluations of internal processes in order to enhance their quality.

Documentation of our processes

The basis of our quality management is our quality management manual. All core, management and support processes are described and responsibilities defined. We continuously monitor all our process descriptions and check if they should be updated or improved. Through internal audits, we make sure that the staff implement all the processes in the way that they are defined.

Assuring the competence of staff and reviewers

Besides the continuous improvement of our procedures, staff development plays a central role in our quality management. Staff members are trained intensively when starting the job, and get an appropriate continuing education in order to always meet new requirements. There are several formats of internal communication, including annual personnel talks, which are also used to discuss the results of evaluations, new quality standards and recent developments in the academic discussion on quality in higher education.

Continuing Education Measure	Purpose, Target Audience and Content

Participation in site visits	Especially for new project managers (for training) and directors/division managers (for evaluation); support staff based on individual agreement
Participation in online trainings and expert workshops	Especially for new project managers in order to get knowledge about the FIBAA accreditation procedures and the corresponding criteria
Participation in external events	Depending on position and fields of responsibility
Internal workshops	Depending on qualification needs
Individual continuing education	Depending on position and fields of responsibility

Reviewers play an important role in all FIBAA procedures. Therefore, we inform and instruct them on all our processes, changes of criteria and their legal basis, and good practice in quality development. We have developed the following instruments:

Continuing Education Measure	Purpose, Target Audience and Content

Purpose, Target Audience and Content	Basic knowledge about the FIBAA accreditation procedures and the corresponding criteria; for all experts, especially for new ones
Expert workshops	Recent decisions and their implementation as well as trends concerning higher education; every expert workshop features a special topic that is presented by a guest lecturer
FIBAA Expert	Biannual newsletter for reviewers, informs about changes in the German and international accreditation system and other aspects that are relevant for the tasks of a FIBAA expert