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"Smart QuaIity" for Higher Education across InternationaI Boundaries - The Dynamic
e-Governance of QuaIity Assurance for GIobaI "Erasmus Mundus" Master Courses

Professor Michael Blakemore
University of Durham (UK) and Ecorys UK Ltd
(email: blakemoremjb@hotmail.com )

The European Commission has been funding international Master courses under the
Erasmus Mundus programme. The courses are deliberately designed to innovate across
international, institutional and disciplinary Higher Education (HE) boundaries. They must be
multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional, they must build synergies across the spaces of
member state education policies, they must overcome institutional practices to ensure
consistent teaching practice (jn particular creating synergies online for e-Education teaching
resources), and they must address the needs of students from around the World who are
awarded competitive scholarships to attend the courses.
n 2008 the Commission launched a study into the Quality Assurance (QA) of the courses.
There was a risk that applying any of the emerging international HE QA standards would
focus more on general QA principles, and would not understand the more innovative quality
being constructed by the new courses. A methodology was therefore developed using
participatory and non-judgemental approaches. The core of this was an intensive site visit
using teams of HE, policy and subject area specialists accompanied by former Erasmus
Mundus students (all on an 'equal power' basis in the group).
The visits saw all actors across the courses from academics, support staff, institutional
leaders and students in a 24-hour programme of discussions. A form of 'Chatham House
Rules' was applied, where positive quality would be named and celebrated, and problems
would be anonymised.
Over three years 2008-2010 the visits were used to construct an online non-judgemental
self-assessment tool EMQA (www.emqa.eu ) and a structured Handbook of Excellence.

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The tool allows courses to self-evaluate across all their participants and to engage in their
own debates.
The online tool has also delivered unintended outcomes in that it has generated a quality
market among current and prospective Erasmus Mundus courses. Prospective courses
have access to a comprehensive overview of quality and can prepare their applications
more effectively. This forces existing courses to innovate more rapidly to maintain their
'market edge' (indeed some existing courses failed to raise their quality more rapidly and
failed to receive further funding). The process has introduced debates about branding, and
the online tool has been used across the world by users ranging from airlines and
businesses to government HE agencies who are exploring QA.
This presentation will review the key developments of EMQA and focus on its wider use in
the development of internationalisation of higher education across the World. t will then
focus on its role in the recent mpact Assessment work carried out for the Commission on
the future of all its international HE mobility programmes (Erasmus, Erasmus Mundus,
Marie Curie etc.) for 2013-2020, providing policy pointers to the need to combine both
conventional place-based education with innovative e-Government and e-Education
services that address the needs of maintaining a competitive HE system within a dynamic
global economy.