The Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (DI) has received international accreditation – the International Quality Review (IQR) – by the UK’s Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), a statement said Sunday.
The DI is the first academic institution in Qatar to have a successful institutional accreditation review by the QAA without any conditions. The accreditation body highlighted eight areas as good practices of high quality. These include, but are not limited to, the broad socio-cultural impact of DI’s offered programmes, the strategic and substantial investment in human capital ensuring student-centred teaching and learning, responsive and accessible support offered to students including specialist support, extensive range of learning resources with high-quality physical environment, the agile approach to student feedback, and supporting students to publish worldwide.
DI president Dr Abdelwahab El-Affendi expressed great pride in this achievement and his appreciation for the contribution of the DI members, professors and students alike.
He described it as “the successful culmination of a process that began in the Autumn of 2017".
"We are pleased with this result, which was not surprising as the DI's mission has emphasised, since its inception, the commitment to the highest international standards,” Dr El-Affendi said. “The DI has already obtained international accreditation for many of its programmes, and signed partnerships with a number of the most prominent universities in the world, and its graduates have been accepted for PhD studies in many of them.”
The QAA evaluates the efficacy and adequacy of an educational institution’s quality assurance system in accordance with the 10 European Standards and Guidelines (ESG) in the European Higher Education Area. The ESGs focus on programme design and review, teaching, learning and assessment, learning resources and student support, information management, and quality assurance systems, among others.
The DI has met all 10 ESG standards, adhering fully to international benchmarking and quality assurance as per the QAA report.
The DI submitted the accreditation request along with the necessary documentation to the QAA in Spring 2021.
This was followed by a virtual exploratory visit of a team of QAA experts, after which it was decided that the DI meets the main conditions for applying for accreditation.
In March 2022, the DI submitted an integrated self-study supported by documents on its compliance with the 10 ESGs and the measurable evaluation elements.
Accordingly, another QAA team conducted a field visit in August 2022, during which it implemented approved verification procedures to ensure that the DI meets the standards in all aspects of the educational process.
The QAA made its final decision on December 12, 2022 after reviewing the working group's report (which was published in full on the agency's website), and the DI was officially notified of the decision on February 9 of this year.
Dr El-Affendi stressed that the DI will continue to work on enhancing the level of performance in all fields, especially in research and knowledge production, including intensive publishing in the Arabic language, in co-operation with the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies.
The DI's members, including a number of its students and graduates, are publishing in the most important publishing platforms globally, with strong support from their professors, and this was also praised in the QAA report.
