Our Services
Below outlines the breadth of our services and how
we can help your higher education organisation achieve its strategic aims.
While we work to established methodologies, all our work is bespoke, so please get in touch and we can explore together, your needs and your next steps.
Accreditation and
Best Practice Advisory Services
Uniquely, we are capable of working at both the strategic and operational levels simultaneously.
Mock Peer
Reviews
Over the years we have had a near 100% success record. Almost every school we have helped prepare for review has succeeded in its accreditation process.
Best Practice Workshops
and Training Seminars
Tap into our experience. Learn from our 20 years of learning. Hear about what works and what doesn’t, in higher education institutions all over the world.
Accredinator
The Accredinator is a software application that helps business schools with accreditation requirements. The application enables Business Schools to manage one underlying database with an easy-to-use interface that produces the required accreditation tables.
Leadership, Strategy and
Executive Coaching
Explore your goals and get clarity, resilience and confidence. Identify the changes needed to succeed. This is coaching but specifically focused on best practice and your strategic priorities.
Other Services
Including Entrepreneurship Education via our sister company the Entrepreneurs Academy and Internal Expert/Co-worker services.
Accreditation and Best Practice Advisory Services
A) Strategic Advisory Service
With your long-term success in mind we…
- Work with you to identify your strategic goals and challenges. You are the experts in your world and we know Accreditation: together we can combine our capabilities to drive excellence in your school.
- Demystify the complexities and nuances of the different accreditations
- Help define which accreditation is right for you
- Provide expert guidance and support for Deans and Senior Management Teams
- Reduce the unknowns, the pressures and the pitfalls
- Provide independent, external and expert validation and perspective
- Analyse gaps and provide tailored advice and recommendations
- Drive project planning and project management, including (where appropriate) participating in accreditation steering groups
We value collaboration, relationships and bringing that outside perspective and experience to the team. If you are ready, we will tell you and outline next steps. If you are not, we will tell you and outline next steps
B) We roll up our sleeves and…
- Help you establish and implement just the right policies and processes for your situation
- Support your staff in the development of policy (particularly in relation to Faculty Qualifications, Research, and Assessment of Learning Outcomes)
- Draft, review and/or edit all accreditation documents including eligibility applications, self-assessment reports, continuous improvement reports etc.
- Conduct programme reviews – with a particular focus on learning outcomes at both programme and module levels
- Provide your external voice to get the project pushed through
- Sit on steering groups or work within your accreditation team to act as an internal expert and project manager
Mock Peer Reviews
The Peer Review is the final assessment by the accrediting bodies. We support clients in “passing the test” and are very proud of our success rate (over 95%).
- We prepare the school for the peer review by organising briefings on possible lines of questioning
- We organise and run mock reviews to fully prepare those involved
- We advise on the logistical side of the final peer review visit to showcase the school in the best light
- We provide a full verbal and written report to the school to give it the best chance of success.
Our goals are to ensure that
- Faculty fully understand the importance of, and their role in, the peer review process
- Faculty experience the practical realities of a peer review visit in advance of the formal undertaking, leaving scope to address any possible areas of weakness and improve performance
- Faculty and the school benefit from direct, timely feedback – including practical advice and suggestions
- Faculty and feel confident, clear and supported.
Our mock reviews are usually conducted by two QED Advisors and an agreed expert from our wider network. Visit duration is typically 2 days (including feedback and debriefing).
And we go further…
A member of the QED team will attend the real Peer Review Visit. They will brief and debrief meeting attendees and help to ensure that all goes to plan on the day. We will address any unexpected issues and help the school to present the very best version of itself when it counts most.
If your Higher Education Organisation wants to make sure it is doing the
right things AND doing them right, talk to us
Best Practice Workshops and Training Seminars
Tap into our experience. Learn from our 20 years of learning. Explore what works and what doesn’t in schools all over the world
Best Practice Workshops
We have developed a series of “Best Practice” workshops, which can be delivered on-site at your school in a cost-effective manner. All of QED’s workshops have been developed with international accreditation standards in mind, but are relevant to any business school that is serious about continuous improvement.
Our Best Practice Series includes:
- Best Practice 1: Mission and Vision (Developing mission; making Mission and Vision work for your school);
- Best Practice 2: Assurance of Learning – AoL (Developing an AoL Framework; Developing Learning Outcomes; Implementing AoL);
- Best Practice 3: Faculty (Building the ideal faculty profile; Developing faculty qualification criteria);
- Best Practice 4: Impact (Defining, Measurement and Evidence)
- Best Practice 5: Leading the Accreditation Process (Accreditation briefings, project management)
- Best Practice 6: Internationalisation (Internationalisation strategy; Collaborative provision topics);
Seminars
We run everything from 1-hour seminars all the way up to bespoke residential retreats helping faculty and staff understand key aspects of accreditation and how they need to prepare and work together towards success.
Typical topics include:
- The Accreditation Process: How to set your School up for success
- Introduction to International Business School Accreditation
- Equis/AACSB demystified
- Preparing for the Peer Review visit
- Leadership development for deans, faculty and executive teams
Seminars can be based on standard content, or be created bespoke for your school.
We also published a limited number of practical, interactive and topical webinars. Each webinar is aimed to help those working in business schools better understand the complex world of accreditation. The webinars are 45 minutes long and include best practice advice, hard learned lessons, practical tips and plenty of Q&A. Topics include:
- Mission & Vision: Why all the Fuss? (Part 1 and Part 2)
- Faculty Qualifications: What’s really required for Accreditation?
- First Steps towards Accreditation: Lessons from Experience and Best Practice
These webinars are available in our Resources Page. Explore these HERE (and link to the resources page)
Webinars
We are now sharing our experiences from successful accreditation projects (with schools in over 20 countries) through a series of practical, interactive and topical webinars. Each webinar is aimed to help those working in business schools better understand the complex world of accreditation. The webinars are 45 minutes long and include best practice advice, hard learned lessons, practical tips and plenty of Q&A.
Recent topics include:
- Mission & Vision: Why all the Fuss? (Part 1 and Part 2)
- Faculty Qualifications: What’s really required for Accreditation?
- First Steps towards Accreditation: Lessons from Experience and Best Practice
Explore past sessions (for free) by registering to use our online resources HERE.
Leadership and Executive Coaching
Our leadership portfolio focuses on deepening leadership intelligence and effectiveness within senior management teams. For example, we can:
- Help you to get clear about your leadership Vision and Mission and your personal Values
- Stop you from worrying about imagined or insignificant challenges
- Help you to get structure: prioritise and clear your mind
- Unearth how you will get buy-in from internal teams and key stakeholders
- Define the size of your challenges, (and likely costs and timeframes), so you can get on with solutions, determine your key limitations and milestones, and remain focused on the prize
- Provide a different perspective so you can base decisions not only upon your own experiences, but also on the successes and lessons from countless deans around the world.
Pathways vary, so programmes are individually tailored to each client. Typically, programmes comprise one or more of the following elements:
- Leadership Game: The Leadership Game is designed to help raise the leadership thought process of each participant and test people’s grasp of everyday leadership practice and values. It is an ideal team-building exercise, which creates greater engagement and awareness for leaders of teams, as well as for all participants. (The Leadership Game is also available in a Sales version – ideal for those teams charged with recruitment and similar targets – and a Communications version).
- Executive Coaching: Coaching can be about many things. In our coaching method, it is principally about change – about developing emotional intelligence and conscious awareness. Our process is diverse and based on a participant-led agenda. Typical issues include everything from dealing with immediate obstacles which are preventing growth and impact, to building a vision and plan to deliver personal and professional goals.
- DISC Profiling: DISC profiling provides an easy, accessible method for individuals to become more deeply aware of their personality and what motivates them. The benefits of DISC include understanding each others profiles and the strengths and challenges this provides for the team; building deeper, stronger inter and intra- team communication; developing strategies for handling conflict and personality clashes.
- Interactive Leadership Sessions: A tailored set of interactive discussion groups – focused on developing practical and personal insights and learning. This program can be delivered virtually and in the format of Lunch ‘n Learns, Mastermind Groups or more formal workshops. Popular themes include Personal Growth; Communication and Leadership.
- Strategic Support: Do you know what you want to achieve? If you don’t, we can work with you and your stakeholders to define your core mission and strategy. Once you know what you want to achieve, we can provide a detailed assessment of your organisational structure and help you identify the changes required to effectively and efficiently deliver that strategy.
