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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Other Services

Including Entrepreneurship Education via our sister company the Entrepreneurs Academy and Internal Expert/Co-worker services.

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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

QED are world class professionals. Their expertise made our quality improvement journey into a great learning experience. We truly appreciate all the high-quality guidance, full engagement and dedication to anticipated result delivery.
Highly recommended to schools selecting the paths to the international acknowledgement of quality assurance.

MARAT ATNASHEVDEAN MOSCOW SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT SKOLKOVO

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%).

  1. We prepare the school for the peer review by organising briefings on possible lines of questioning
  2. We organise and run mock reviews to fully prepare those involved
  3. We advise on the logistical side of the final peer review visit to showcase the school in the best light
  4. 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.

It is completely fair to say that – to me – your (QED) visit was the most determinant moment of the whole process. It was with the mock peer review visit and your comments and suggestions that we owned our SER – undertaking a profound revision – and prepared wholeheartedly for the visit. So thank you very much.
It was a perfect visit, with the most wonderful Base Room and a well-organized visit schedule. A lot of this was due to your advice and help. Many thanks for caring!

CLARA RAPOSO; DEAN ISEGLISBON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS & MANAGEMENT PORTUGAL

If your Higher Education Organisation wants to make sure it is doing the
right things AND doing them right, talk to us

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.

"QED provides an invigorating combination of realism and encouragement in its presentation of the contemporary higher education landscape. We were not left in any doubt about what we must do, but at the same time we were given valuable guidance about how to do it."

MICHAEL KEANEYMETROPOLIA BUSINESS SCHOOL, FINLAND

"This QED Webinar on faculty qualifications was an exciting high-speed journey through the major international business school accreditations and their requirements regarding faculty qualifications. Even though I am mainly concerned with AACSB accreditation and already know a lot about their standards, it was very valuable to get such a concise overview of all the other options. Actually the comparison helped me sharpen my understanding for what it expected by AACSB."

Uli MathiesIBS Groningen, Hanze, Netherlands

"The QED AA webinar provides concrete and rapidly actionable advice on subjects that are central to the concerns of accreditation managers. The QED AA team is knowledgeable, professional and completely on message with respect to our accreditation requirements. I highly recommend the webinars both for those who are new to accreditations as well as those with a bit more experience but looking for a new perspective on well-known themes."

Julie Perrin-HalotGrenoble École de Management, France

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.

"QED provided hands-on leadership training in an engaging and effective way that felt almost “frighteningly real”. The questions on the cards allowed for thoughtful discussions and we got to the root of thoughts and suggestions surprisingly quickly. It was amazingly easy to get the conversation going in a facilitated way, and it was great fun. Time was simply flying away, while we were learning from peers and sharing opinions that one wouldn’t normally share. No doubt that leadership development is best acquired through experience and reflection, yet many traditional leadership training programs are unable to deliver this type of learning opportunity. Often times leaders show up for training being physically present but mentally absent—and being more focused on what is being missed in their jobs by attending the training. But with QED’s game we got to the root of leadership in an inescapable way."

JEANETTE LEMMERGAARDHEAD OF DEPARTMENT OF MARKETING & MANAGEMENT UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN DENMARK DENMARK

If your Higher Education Organisation wants to make sure it is doing the
right things AND doing them right, talk to us

TALK TO US

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