Abstract:

Student-centred learning, recognized as an important determinant of quality assurance, especially accentuated through the 2015 version of the European Standards and Guidelines (ESG), should also be considered as a leading principle of meaningful and relevant quality assurance system of the higher education institution, involving a creation of an environment for active student learning with flexible programs while using learning outcomes to understand their achievement. The Agency for Science and Higher Education, Croatian accreditation authority, assesses this institutional aspect, including the ones related to the inter- and intrainstitutional cooperation through work-based learning and its implementation in student workload. In Croatian higher education setting, accreditation process is mandatory for all higher education institutions in five-year cycles. It encompasses quality standards compatible to the ESG and is comprised of four phases – the self-evaluation report, a review team’s visit, an accreditation report and follow-up.

This presentation, through the analysis of institutional accreditation reports (2019-2021 period), systematizes the review teams’ findings and extracts institutional practices and obstacles related to the implementation and improvement of student work-based learning.

Review teams’ accreditation findings (2019-2021) on work-based learning include different practices: HEI encouragement of workplace learning, no institutional collaboration, informal collaboration (individual contacts), workplace learning as optional and no quality assessment of workplace learning. When it comes to the forms of work-based learning review teams differentiate intrainstitutional activities such as exercises, labs, practical work with classroom mentors, projects, volunteering in different promotion activities, etc. and interinstitutional collaboration including collaboration with other HEIs, professional organizations as well as public and private sector. Assessment of work-based learning includes different practices including no assessment at all, unformalized assessment (diaries, individual observations), no consistent assessment, inadequate student workload (ECTS), work-based learning which is not integrated in overall study programme workload, student workload not being unified across all HEI programmes as well as no alignment of workplace LOs with programme outcomes, but also commendable practice of adequate ECTS workload harmonized with LOs and qualification level.

Therefore, the results of content analysis of 76 reports from institutional reaccreditation indicate that review teams differentiate between many forms of institutional practices promoting and improving work-based learning. Likewise, quality assurance, as the analysis shows, plays an intermediary role in the implementation of outcomes of interinstitutional collaboration into students’ learning as well as other intrainstitutional activities. It is notable that higher education institutions aspire to increase their public engagement and work-based activities, but the successful translation thereof into student learning and evaluation seems to be a complex process where institutional quality assurance mechanisms play an important role in work-based learning formalization.

Keywords:

Croatian Agency for Science and Higher Education, work-based learning, institutional reaccreditation.