IU Quality Management
IU International University of Applied Sciences supports students with innovative study programmes in realising their professional and personal goals. To achieve this target, we have established a quality management system that sustainably ensures the quality of the services offered and involves all employees of the university.
The IU quality management system is the result of an intensive cooperation process between the university management, the university administration, the teaching staff, the university committees and, last but not least, the students of the university. The quality management system has the purpose of ensuring compliance with internal and external requirements and supporting the achievement of the development goals set by the university.
Quality objectives of the IU
The quality objectives of IU International University are derived from the mission statement and the development goals of the university. They were adopted by the Rectorate after consultation in the Senate of the IU International University:
Develop high-quality, innovative study programmes that enable the targeted growth.
Continuous development of teaching quality, taking into account the latest technologies and innovative teaching formats to increase student satisfaction.
Ensuring a high level of quality transparency with regard to teaching, administrative and technical support for students.
Involving relevant stakeholders in the quality assurance process through (a) regular evaluations and (b) active involvement in the quality assurance process.
In order to achieve the development goals and the higher-level quality goals based on them, the central processes for achieving goals in the area of study and teaching were defined and documented.
For each process, concretely measurable quality goals were defined, which were backed up with measurable criteria as well as with quality development measures.
Structure of the IU's Quality Management System
Based on the quality objectives and the expectations of the stakeholders, IU International University has developed a process-based quality management system in order to systematically assure the quality of the university's service areas relevant to the achievement of the objectives. The guiding principle is that optimal organisation and implementation of product-related processes leads to optimal products. In the first stage of development, the quality management system initially refers to the service area of " Study and Teaching" and is to include research and transfer activities in a later stage of development.
We differentiate between processes related to the management of the university ("management processes", highlighted in yellow in the following figure), processes related to the education of students ("core processes", highlighted in orange) and processes that create the (mostly administrative) prerequisites for the core processes ("support processes", highlighted in green). The following process map provides a general overview of the processes recorded in the quality management system.
Organisation of the Quality Management System
The organisation of the quality management system is based on the criteria that are critical to quality in the development and implementation of study programmes: in addition to the academic area (shown in blue in the following diagram), which is responsible for the core processes "programme development", "programme improvement" and "programme implementation", these are the areas that are responsible for the "day-to-day operation" of the study programmes (administrative areas, shown in yellow in the following diagram). The following diagram illustrates the structure of the quality management system.
The quality management for the study programmes is the responsibility of the programme directors; the quality management for the administrative areas relevant for accreditation is the responsibility of the department heads, who are equipped with the corresponding authority to issue guidelines. The Rectorate is responsible for the quality management of IU International University across all study programmes and all administrative areas. The ongoing monitoring of the quality management system is the responsibility of the quality team associated with the Rectorate. The Senate and the Advisory Board are above this structure, as their tasks concern the foundations or the functioning of the quality management system as a whole.
Report system
The precondition for quality management of ongoing operations is the availability of the necessary data. This goal is achieved by our reporting system, which documents the degree of goal achievement at regular intervals ("Quality Report"). Another part of the reporting system is an annual quality report, which will inform the public about general results of the quality management system in the future. An important source of information for the reporting system are the evaluations at the university. The evaluations include surveys of internal and also external stakeholders of IU International University. The Rectorate is responsible for the conception of the university-wide evaluation system, including the specifics of the study forms.
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