The APPRAIS Consortium agreed to dedicate the equipment budget to develop a unique software for quality assurance management (QAM) in research, students’ services and third mission, for the 8 HEIs in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
The tool was intended to equip the QA Directorates in each Kurdish HEIs to ensure an accurate and professional management of the services delivered with particular regard to research, third mission and students’ services.
Following several online meetings between January and February 2022, and the Partners meeting in Pisa on March 2022, the technical requirements and specifications of the software were defined. A Tender Evaluation Committee was created (composed by the Director of Quality Assurance from each university, the local project coordinator and IT experts) to assess the 8 valid offers received. The Committee assigned the contract to the winning company Awrosoft, a Kurdish company from Erbil.
Awrosoft delivered the first prototype version of the software on mid-February 2023, presented on occasion of the WP5 Harmonisation workshop in Erbil. Between March and June 2023, the first usable version of the software was released, including features for the three dimensions foreseen (research, third mission and students’ services). Furthermore, 24 university staff members from the 8 Kurdish HEIs participated in a two-days training (July 24-25, 2023) on the use of the software, delivered by Awrosoft and hosted by Salaheddin University-Erbil.
After the face-to-face training, the 8 Kurdish universities started to test and pilot the software, in their daily working routines. During this piloting phase, the universities suggested improvements in some areas of the software, promptly communicated to the provider. Furthermore, a new dimension that was no initially planned was developed by Awrosoft, with regards the quality assurance management of teaching portfolio. The Kurdish partners of APPRAIS have been testing the use of the software since July 2023 and several further meetings and trainings (in-presence and online) were conducted by the Awrosoft company, the provider of the software, in collaboration with UNIMED and the KRG Ministry, to guarantee further training on the use of the tool, and allow more staff to fully benefit from the instrument.
A task force has been established with the KRG Ministry and dedicated team members (QA Directors and IT staff) from each Kurdish university, to monitor and regularly follow up on the use of the software. All the 8 APPRAIS HEIs, after the official end of the APPRAIS project, continue to report on the use of the software to the KRG Ministry.
Finally, the Awrosoft Company was invited to take part in Erbil at the Final Conference of the APPRAIS project and some KRG university representatives shared and presented the software and its potential to the whole audience, including other non-partner universities from the KRG region. The KRG Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research has indeed recognized the usefulness, the value and the great potentiality of the tool and agreed to extend indeed its use also to other Kurdish universities.
Find HERE the presentation of the software delivered during the APPRAIS Final Conference.
At this link the website dedicated to Uniting universities for a Trasformative Third Mission.
