Course of Study Evaluation
Course of study evaluations are regarded as a crucial instrument for quality assurance at RWTH Aachen. In addition to fulfill legal requirements in accordance with ection seven of the University High Education Act, the goal of this internal quality assurance instrument is systematically identify outstanding and weak teaching peformance, make teaching and learning more transparent, and optimize studying and examination procedures.
The course of study evaluations take a participatory approach, thus offering students and academic staff the possibility to be involved in the analysis of the actual state and the development and implementation of teaching goals and measures.
Link Between Evaluation and Accreditation
In accordance with section seven, paragraph one of the North Rhine Westphalia Higher Education Act, universities are required to accredit courses of study and conduct a quality assurance evaluation process. In order to reduce the workload for faculties, the course of study evaluations and the accreditation process are sensibly linked at RWTH Aachen.
The evaluation of teaching units is conducted before the respective accreditation process, in order to better use the insight acquired during the re-evaluation and the elicited improvement measures for accreditation
Since the accreditation and evalution reports largely correspond with each other, it is recommended to use the reaccreditation report as the foundation for the re-evaluation. However, the document must be expanded with a few "evaluation specific" aspects, that are only debated in university-internal discussions. Moreover, potential problems in the individual teaching units should be targeted by means of certain guiding questions.