Universität Rostock - Structure - Quality Assurance - Assuring quality - Evaluation - Evaluation in the Consortium of Northern Universities

The universities of Bremen, Hamburg, Kiel, Oldenburg and Rostock founded the Consortium of North German Universities in 1994. Meanwhile, the universities of Greifswald and Luebeck became members, too.  The main joint project of all involved universities was and is the evaluation procedure for assuring and improving the quality of study and education. 

In 1994, the “Consortium of Northern Universities” was one of the first evaluation initiatives in Germany. Nowadays, it’s procedures are considered as reference model for evaluation processes of other projects and groups and provides information via EvaNet.

After all departments have been evaluated once since 1994, the second evaluation cycle of the Consortium was started in 2004. Rectors and presidents agreed – analogous to the first procedure – to start with the subjects Biology and German language and literature.

Strengths of the old procedures will be retained (orientation towards content and education structures, encouragement of communication and formation of opinions). Still, the broad approach of the first cycle will be replaced by focussing on two or three topics in the second evaluation cycle. 

The first topic focuses on "Learning Outcome", i.e. quantitative and qualitative study results. Here, the definition of study results and their implementation in the department are the most relevant aspects, i.e. the competences, skills and knowledge students should gain during their studies and how this can be taught and examined.

Quality assurance and management matters gain importance in the departments/institutes, a. o. related to accreditations, and will become the second main topic of the evaluation.

The third focus will and can be determined by every department / institute itself. 

The website of the Consortium of Northern Universities is available here, providing various materials, such as the project plan for the evaluation procedure and publications : http://www.uni-nordverbund.de/.