Quality of Study Programs: An Ecosystems Perspective

摘要

The quality of study programs is one of the issues that are essential in the turbulent global environment universities nowadays operate in. Quality may be considered in terms of different quality standards trying to follow their guidelines formally and practically. This paper takes a different view of the quality issue with respect to the study programs in the field of engineering, namely, the quality of the study program is considered from the ecosystem perspective and value exchange between different members of the ecosystem is taken as a central object of interest in defining and supporting the high quality of the program. While analysis of value exchange and detection of changes in the value provision and request are not a natural part of the university teaching process, appropriate models and support systems can help to understand the value exchange process in the educational ecosystem. The understanding of the value exchange process, in turn, helps to identify and monitor knowledge requirements for developing high quality study programs.