Welcome to the OAAAQA Online Glossary!
This Glossary targets three main audiences, namely; higher education institutions (HEIs); OAAAQA External Review panel members; and other stakeholders including, higher education students, employers, the professions, supervising ministries, institutional affiliates, and the public in general.
As the Glossary aims at building some common understanding regarding the External Quality Assurance (EQA) activities performed by the OAAAQA, it has been limited to the key terms describing the main activities and/or processes in which any of the abovementioned stakeholders may be involved, such as Quality Audit, Institutional Standards Assessment, Programme Standards Assessment, GFP Quality Audit.
For these reasons, the terms included in this Glossary are based on terminology and definitions developed for OAAAQA Manuals and policy documents. They have been largely selected through public consultations and other forms of feedback. To reflect international standards, the OAAAQA Glossary terms have also been benchmarked against various external sources (click here for more information).
As a public document addressed to audiences with differential backgrounds in QA and/or management, the wording of the definitions has been deliberately set at the simplified where possible, but without undermining the technical complexity of the concepts and/or procedures described.
The Glossary is intended as a dynamic document: it shall continue to grow in tandem with the growing responsibilities of the OAAAQA, and the expanding scope of its EQA activities. More new terms will be added in due course, while some concepts may undergo changes, in response to the conceptual adjustments OAAAQA makes from time to time.