25-26 November 2022| Singapore

On 25-26 November 2022, Dr. Nantha Nguantad, the Acting Director led an ONESQA executives and staff to attend the APQN Annual Academic Conference (ACC) and Annual General Meeting (AGM) for the year 2022 at Lifelong Learning Institution in Singapore. The executives and staff were Dr. Worawit Phasawasuwas, Deputy Director, Dr. Napaporn Songsaeng, Head of Assessment and Certification Bureau, Ms. Weeranuch Suksawang, Head of Policy Development and Strategy Section, Ms. Nualsupak Phunsap, Chief of International Affairs Unit, Mr. Thanaphat Samphanrattanachai, Chief of IT Assessment System Unit, and Ms. Umpa Sea-Lee, Officer, Policy and Planning Unit.

The AAC & AGM is an annual Asia-Pacific event that brings together Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), Quality Assurance Agencies (QAAs), government regulators and organizations working in the field of quality assurance together to discuss and advance quality assurance in higher education.

The theme of this year's conference was Quality Assurance for Higher Education under the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond in the Asia-Pacific Region. The Conference focused on the future of QA for higher education in the era of technological advances to cover all the topics of digitalization of quality assurance, information technology innovations in higher education accreditation, internationalization of quality assurance, outcome-based teaching and learning, and redefining role of government and private sector.

At the Annual General Meeting, ONESQA joined in the congratulation of Mr. Nar Bahadur Raika, Specialist (Advisor) to the Quality Assurance and Accreditation Division, Department of Adult and Higher Education, Ministry of Education, Bhutan to be appointed as the new APQN President.

Furthermore, APQN was a platform for academic officers to submit their articles related on QA works to suit the main theme of each year. The APQN conference 2022 provided ONESQA staff to absorb the atmosphere of paper presentation in order to prepare themselves to be a presenter next year and to move towards internationalization according to ONESQA's strategy accordingly.

At the Conference, it provided opportunities to interact with ONESQA’s QA partners: JUAA, TWAEA, NIAD-QE, and other representatives from QA agencies in Asia-Pacific. It also allowed ONESQA to strengthen partnerships with JUAA, Japan and TWAEA, Taiwan to highlight the collaborative project on International Joint Accreditation Standards (iJAS), which was a cross-border quality assurance framework to contribute to the promotion of internationalization of universities in Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand. ONESQA will catalyze this collaboration actively in order to promote internationally-recognized quality education tending to facilitate the marking of international cooperation agreements among universities in the 3 countries on student inbound and outbound mobility and joint degree as well.

In 2023, ONESQA, JUAA, and TWAEA will continue to move forward cooperation activities inclusive of internship program and international staff exchange program in order to enhance skills and global mindset for QA staff to work on cross-cultural teams.