Assessment is critical in postsecondary education, as it is at all levels. Assessments are classified into four types: diagnostic, summative, evaluative, and formative. Recent trends in assessment have migrated away from summative to formative evaluations. Formative evaluations help students develop expertise and concentrate their schedules, ease…

Many institutions are making the move from pen and paper to online examinations, but the literature offers relatively few critical reflections on the ramifications of such a shift. This research presents evidence of the ways in which the social and human practices of online exams are deeply entangled with the material and technological, and…

Students form expectations and perceptions about assessment quality, and they experience the consequences of inferior assessment quality. These expectations and perceptions influence how students use assessment and the information it provides in educational practice. Unfortunately, little is known about students' expectations and perceptions of…

In this paper, I argue for more and better learning metrics in higher education, eventually through an international, comparative assessment of students' learning outcomes. Better learning measures may help to improve transparency in the system by addressing the information asymmetry problem. If not addressed adequately, the lack of transparency…

This article argues that strong interrelations between methodological and theoretical advances exist. Progress in, especially comparative, methods may have important impacts on theory evaluation. By using the example of the "Varieties of Capitalism" approach and an international comparison of higher education systems, it can be shown…

Open online distance learning in higher education has quickly gained popularity, expanded, and evolved, with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as the most recent development. New web technologies allow for scalable ways to deliver video lecture content, implement social forums and track student progress in MOOCs. However, we remain limited in…

In today's output defined society, alumni are the output of higher education. This article shows how alumni research can be used as an important indicator of curriculum quality. This relatively unexplored area of engineering education research in Europe is highlighted using a case study carried out in the Netherlands, the outcomes of which have…

The concepts of differentiation and profiling are cornerstones in discussions about the organisation of contemporary higher education systems, following the trends of massification and global competition. This contribution provides a system-level description and comparison of the German and Dutch higher education systems regarding these topics,…

The development of assessments that are fit to assess professional competence in higher vocational education requires a reconsideration of assessment methods, quality criteria and (self)evaluation. This article examines the self-evaluations of nine courses of a large higher vocational education institute. Per course, 4-11 teachers and 3-10…

The rationale behind this study is that entrepreneurship education programmes (EEP) in post-compulsory education mainly address entrepreneurial intentions, instead of actual entrepreneurial behaviour, and that students, compared to practicing entrepreneurs, might have a wide range of entrepreneurial intentions when entering such a programme. The…

In February 2009, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) commissioned RAND Europe to review approaches to evaluating the impact of research as part of their wider work programme to develop new arrangements for the assessment and funding of research--referred to as the Research Excellence Framework (REF). The objectives were 1) to…

There are lots of definitions of quality, and also of quality in education. Garvin (1984) discerns five approaches: the transcendental approach, the product-oriented approach, the customer-oriented approach, the manufacturing-oriented approach and the value-for-money approach. Harvey and Green (1993) give five interrelated concepts of quality as:…

Factors influencing the successful introduction of portfolios are described. A portfolio is a purposeful collection of all kinds of documents and other artefacts that together give an impression of how tasks were fulfilled and how competence has developed. A portfolio can also contain reflections and plans for future development. Although…

This protocol explains the new system for assessing research quality at research universities located in the Netherlands. It discusses the legal and historical background for establishing a new system of quality determination in research, describes the essential aspects of the research assessment process and the particular tasks of…

The European dimension in quality assurance grows and glows. In this article, we try to relate the European objectives, as stated in the various European initiatives, to the national quality assurance systems of The Netherlands and Denmark. This will be done by looking closer at the objectives regarding quality assurance and internationalisation,…