The QualityLink consortium and external experts gathered in Zagreb to discuss technical standards for sharing quality information on higher education courses.

The meeting also reviewed initial results from a survey on quality indicators. This showed that students prioritise clear course descriptions, institution reputation and labour market relevance of courses.

The meeting focused on three technical challenges:

• creating a unique course identifier to track courses across different platforms,
• developing an ontology that extends the European Learning Model (ELM) to include additional quality indicators, and
• improving data exchange between institutions.

Participants explored solutions for mapping between different data standards (particularly OOAPI, Edu-API, OCCAPI and ELM), and defining specifications for data discovery and exchange. The board also discussed approaches for accommodating different target groups of learners, handling enrolment capacities, and tracking changes to courses over time.

The public consultation will inform the development of software components and piloting opportunities for higher education institutions to test these standards in the coming months, furthering QualityLink’s goal of making quality information on courses more accessible and interoperable.