This work package aims to increase awareness of quality culture and expand quality assurance implementation in Higher Education, focusing more on external quality assurance. This work package will concentrate on institutional evaluation, both internal and external based on the following activities:

• Conferences, panels and workshops to promote quality culture in HEIs. National events with at least 500 participants will be organized. An international expert will be invited to the meetings so that good practices and challenges could be shared.
• Performing external quality reviews to five universities volunteering for the process, to promote the culture of institutional quality assurance. Based on the results obtained from a survey, five universities will be selected and visited for the review. International experts will be invited only to the last three visits, in order to ensure the smoothness before international participation to QA.
• Developing standards and guidelines for external QA agencies performing programme-accreditation, in line with the European Standards and Guidelines for QA in EHEA in coordination with the agencies in operation.
• Getting the standards and guidelines to be developed for recognition and licensing of QA agencies reviewed by an international expert.

It is believed that the project will have an important impact on the Turkish higher education and practices towards aligning it with the European level developments in the EHEA, with particular focus on quality assurance within this work package. The structures and practices established, tested or improved through the package will be widely used by the actors in the Turkish higher education system.

Recognition of prior non-formal and in-formal learning is not clear and this is the weakest area for Turkey in Bologna Scorecard. In other words, despite the progress in the tools of Bologna Process in Turkey, Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) is still the weakest part of Turkish higher education system due to the need for legislative changes and will be addressed in this project. Besides, recognition of diplomas and degrees in higher education in levels of associate, bachelor and master gained abroad is another point which will be focused within this project.

Council of Higher Education (CoHE) (Equivalency/Recognition Unit) performs this task according to the rules stated in the Lisbon Recognition Convention (LRC). This is not a straight forward procedure because the recognition of degrees and diplomas taken from different institutions abroad needs special academic guidance. In most cases this guidance is requested from related departments' teaching staff at different universities in Turkey. The improvement of the procedure is essential to be able to prevent misunderstanding/misinterpretation caused by different approaches.

The activities planned within this work package include the following:

• Reviewing the practices in countries with a leading role in RPL; site visits to countries with a leading role in RPL,
• Workshops on sharing best practices in countries with a leading role in RPL,
• Sharing information with authorities from CoHE, Ministry of National Education (MoNE) and Vocational Qualifications Authority (VQA) about RPL,
• Exercising the applicability of RPL with representatives from MoNE and VQA. Bologna Experts will have the opportunity to share information and experience with MoNE and VQA representatives and will be informed about the possible shortcomings and/or good practices in the recognition of non-formal and informal learning in Turkey as well as in other countries,
• Preparing a document explaining the procedure, rules and regulations for RPL in Turkey,
• A webpage regarding recognition will be generated in order to create a platform to share experiences, guidelines, implementation process etc. up to date,
• Discussing the evaluation of current procedures with the representatives at the Equivalency/Recognition Unit at CoHE,
• Analysing the latest developments in recognition in terms of decisions, progress as well as possible shortcomings within the country and Europe,
• Preparing a guide explaining the procedure and case studies on recognition of degrees and diplomas.

Briefly;

• A Recognition Guide will be prepared for recognition of degrees and diplomas in higher education.
• An RPL Guide will be prepared.
• There will be two discussion meetings on the most urgent RPL issues in Turkey and also on setting a course for solutions and necessities.
• There will be two national meetings. The first meeting will focus on sharing of review and analysis results with representatives from CoHE, MoNE and VQA. The second meeting will cover the development of action plan and applicability of RPL in higher education institutions and current recognition/equivalency procedures, case studies on degrees and diplomas gained abroad.
• Two site visits will be scheduled to experienced countries about RPL practices.
• Web-site will be created about all recognition procedures in Turkey.

Background of ECTS Implementation in Turkey

ECTS has been in place in Turkey since 2003. Among HEIs in EU and candidate countries Turkish HEIs have a leading role in achieving ECTS label with currently 31 HEIs holding ECTS label. In addition, Turkey is a large country with 182 HEIs about 20% of which are less than five years old. These very young HEIs trigger the employment of a big population of academic staff who are not experienced in ECTS, nor in general Bologna Reforms.

It becomes even a more serious issue considering that, by law, ECTS has been the only credit system in Turkish HE to be used since 2011. Old and big universities some of which already have good implementation of ECTS do have know-how, but many others, especially newly established HEIs are in need of expertise and on the look-out for those to train them for a successful understanding and use of ECTS rules.

Purpose of the Workpackage

The link between LOs and ECTS needs clarification and purification in order to improve the learning environment with respect to transparency from the points of view of students and all other stakeholders.

The structures and practices established, tested or improved throughout the work packages are intended to extend the implementation of the ECTS by Turkish HEIs. Towards the calculation of ECTS credits based on student workload, and re-arranging curricula to fit and meet TQF, it is our objective to widen the workshops in such a way that representatives of main study fields will be called up on.

Activities in the Workpackage

In this context, five workshops to train the trainers from selected fields (such as health sciences, engineering, education, humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, vocational programmes, etc.) with the objective of producing know-how for writing up and purification of LOs and working out the student workload to achieve them.

A national ECTS/DS Label will also be designed and delivered by the CoHE. Such a need stems from the fact that during the last project, most of the HEIs in Turkey asked CoHE to establish a national Label, while hoping the European Commission to decide keeping the Labels.

The project activities will be scheduled and the EHEA-WG members (former BEs) will be attributed to their role during the first coordination meeting at the beginning of the project lifetime. The activities will then be monitored and assessed throughout the 3 coordination meetings to which all 15 national experts are expected to participate. All of the meetings will take place at CoHE, Ankara. The first one will also include a meeting with the related CoHE units. The second coordination meeting will take place at the end of the 2017 to discuss the content of the Interim Report. The last coordination meeting will take place one month before the end in order to discuss the content of the Final Report and again share the work. CoHE deputy-president (as the project coordinator and BFUG member) will join the coordination meetings.

Developing ideas for dissemination and exploitation is an important key and necessary essential for every project funded by the European Commission. In this respect, we will prepare an elaborare dissemination strategy plan for the exploitation which is a crucial for the success of the project and for the sustainability of outputs in the long term of the Project. The main purposes of the dissemination activities are the raising the awareness and promoting the Project. However, in fact, to guarantee the transfer of project results beyond its life, an all-inclusive exploitation strategy for multiplication should be prepared as detailed as possible before the beginning of the project, too. The results of the activities will be published on Project's webside.