Accreditations like AACSB or EQUIS are the keys to access the club of the world’s most prestigious schools in Higher Education. No need to say these accreditations are expensive, exhaustive and require drastic transformations of a school’s processes and organization. Getting them, renewing them and entertain continuous improvement can be a real hassle.
First thing first, it is important to understand what accreditations like AACSB clearly ask for:
You probably know that the goal of getting accredited is to open a loop of continuous improvement that you’ll be able to close and continue to improve if the committees of the accreditation decide that you nailed it. What they want to you to do is to ensure them that students are learning well. That’s Assurance of Learning (AoL).
As the process of accreditation is tough!
Understanding the organization, its values and processes are not that hard. There’s a whole library of documents that just wait to be read. Nevertheless, it’s complicated to understand but it’s the best thing to do before applying to the accreditation.
It is about integrating EVERYONE in the process
Often, the complexity of the accreditation process pushes accreditation and school managers to isolate themselves in a high tower trying to sort out a way of getting things done. First and definitive mistake. AACSB, like other labels, is a matter of teamwork. Everyone must be on the same page, from the top management of the school to the students themselves. How?
Basically, it means telling everyone what’s going to happen and why it’s good.
Calling everyone for participation is great. Organizing each group and process actions is even greater. The goal is thus to plan and attribute roles and problem-solving methods between all the actors. But hey! You’re not alone. Never forget it. Mentors and committees are here to help you carry this out thanks to their pragmatic experience.
Organization and processes to adopt vary a lot according to schools and their cultures. Nevertheless, adopting an organization and processes based on constant communication and rapid execution between groups is crucial.
For example, you can do:
Process this organization and cleanly close the loop, you’re ready to be an accredited, top innovative institution!
Get a learning optimization process
Take a look at this process. Part Design thinking, part Growth hacking, we adapted it to learning processes. The goal is to quickly operate tests and changes following feedbacks from professors or students, thus you can easily accelerate your accreditation process and improvement cycles.
Learn more about learning optimization here.
Finally, hear what your mentor has to say. This one seems super easy but still is crucial. Mentors are here to help you get that accreditation. Plus, the school he or she comes from already is, so they know how to do it.
TestWe helps you optimize your learning processes!
Closing the loop means entering constant optimization and improvement of your learning processes. Whether you’re applying for an accreditation like AACSB or if you’re already accredited, TestWe helps you optimize learning.
First, because we offer a solution that let’s collect, store, analyse and report one of the most precious data you need to benchmark your AoL and continuous improvement: academic data. Simply put, to get or renew easily your accreditation. That solution is e-Exam.
By digitizing your exam processes, we do not only save you time for your exam creation or exam grading. We do not only let your students take their exams on their own laptop or tablet in a secure way. We let you have access to their academic data reports through a data visualisation tool, facilitating thus analysis.
By inputting learning outcomes, learning goals and objectives as well as professors qualitative feedback on each of the students’ assessments, we help you track their skills acquisition, thus facilitating learning processes improvement.
Want to know more? Sure, take a look at this white paper, you’ll find other tips and testimonies from accredited schools.