Projects

The project aims at the development and pilot implementation of a quality management system for the European University Alliance Unite!

(Duration: October 2019 – October 2022)

Unite! develops and starts to implement quality management principles and processes that support the vision of realising a new European University. This is a pioneering endeavour for the quality management both of universities and for the European Higher Education Area.

Starting point and basis of Unite!’s integrated quality management are the quality management procedures and approaches in all seven member universities. All Unite! partners have quality management systems in accordance with the European Standards and Guidelines. In addition, the Unite! partners share a vision of the high – and added – quality they aim for as a European University. These ambitions define the specific quality goals for the Unite! quality management (QM). Unite! seeks to establish, for its core activities and services, quality management cycles that link strategic goals of the alliance with quality assurance instruments of the partner universities.

As key document for the Unite! QM, the Quality Management Manual (QMM) defines the quality management principles and procedures, as well as the Unite! quality goals.

The project plan includes:

- the evaluation of the QMM as part of the EUniQ project,
- its discussion and dissemination within the Unite! community, in particular the task forces,
- the involvement of external stakeholders for its further development,
- and its approval by the Unite! Governing Platform.

The project seeks to implement the Unite! QM approach in a number of pilot activities.

As part of the project “Increasing the efficiency of institutional evaluation, especially in the field of study and teaching”, the central processes of integrated quality management at the TU Darmstadt – institutional evaluation and study program development – were systematically revised in a participatory process and mapped with the help of the newly introduced process management software Signavio. In the process

• the aforementioned processes were even better coordinated with each other
• the interfaces between the involved actors of the central administration, the departments and the presidium were optimized,
• the transparency and binding nature of the processes were increased,
• Preparatory work for the system reaccreditation of the TU Darmstadt was created.

The project results are related to the overarching introduction of professional process management in the central administration of the TU Darmstadt and contribute to the further professionalization and digitization of the central administrative processes.

The project was divided into three project phases:

• Phase 1: The first project phase served to systematically reflect on and analyze the existing processes with the participation of various stakeholders at the TU Darmstadt and concluded with a further development of the content of the current integrated quality management of the TU Darmstadt.
• Phase 2: In the second project phase, the process management software Signavio was introduced. The processes and sub-processes of the institutional evaluation and the study program development were modeled and coordinated in Signavio in an iterative process.
• Phase 3: In the third project phase, the further developed and modeled processes were transferred to the practical application. In addition, a training concept for study program development, especially for new committee members, was developed and implemented.

The project was led by the Quality Management Unit (project management) and the Study Programs and Quality Assurance Unit (deputy project management).