post-COVID technological impacts on post-Soviet HEIs

• In Event: Higher education dynamics in digital(ized) societies: Quality, research and networked collaboration

Proposal

After gaining independence in the years between 1989 and 1991, the 15 post-Soviet countries started to reform their higher education systems. Among many novelties during this period, one important trend was the significant increase in student population and the prevalence of private higher education institutions. The latter put the quality of education under a question mark (Heyneman, 2010; Smolentseva et al., 2018). These reasons together with the requirements of the Bologna process prompted post-Soviet states to establish quality assurance mechanisms that are in alignment with the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA). However, post-Soviet countries’ quality assurance systems are still developing and their higher education systems are new, less experienced, and, therefore, reputation-wise, carry less weight (Karakhanyan et al., 2020; Smolentseva et al., 2018). Therefore, many of these states seek international accreditation to assure external stakeholders of their quality, boost their reputation, and participate in global competition.

The covid-19 pandemic catalyzed many changes to both teaching and learning practices and quality assurance mechanisms. Most planned quality assurance practices, including site visits first were postponed and later, carried out virtually (Dottin, 2021; Kelo, 2021; Cirlan & Loukkola, 2021; QAA, 2020; Eaton, 2021). Legal changes became necessary as well, as many countries had to make amendments to laws and regulations to grant accreditation extensions to HEIs and/or their study program. Many quality assurance agencies created guidelines for HEIs to support their transition to online delivery. Legal and regulation changes were necessary as well to allow online delivery of study programs.
However, the readiness, expertise and capacity of HEIs and quality assurance agencies to make this move was inconsistent within and across countries. Different HEIs within the country had different levels of resources, IT infrastructure, technological savvy to implement these changes as well as different post-Soviet countries had different levels of readiness to transition to a remote mode of operations.

Online reviews bring their advantages and disadvantages. Some of the benefits of online reviews are an ease of engaging foreign peer reviewers without extra cost, lower carbon footprint due to less international travel, engaging alumni and employers who are usually difficult to engage in in-person site visits, and increased time allocated for preparation before the actual site visit. However, human and social aspects of the review process are a challenge.

During the pandemic, the main objective of IQA was to be flexible and adapt to new contexts while simultaneously supporting HEIs. Some of the key factors that enabled institutions to adapt to the new reality and maintain quality education were autonomy, flexibility in decision-making, quality culture, innovation, collaboration within and across institutions, and effective communication across management, staff, and students. Institutions underline the positive effect of Covid in that it boosted the digitalization of HEIs.
This paper examines which post-Soviet countries maintained the changes brought by the pandemic and maintained the usage of digital tools and online modes of delivery and quality assurance after the pandemic and to what extent, and which, if any, did not. And discusses possible explanations.

Authors

• Maia Gelashvili, Boston College

• Gerardo L Blanco, Boston College