The opening session of the QFORTE Project “Fortifying Higher Education Quality in Moldova” took place this morning. It was inaugurated by José Miguel Mateos Roco, Vice-Rector for Research and Knowledge Transfer of the University of Salamanca, accompanied by Prof. Salvador Rus Rufino, Director of the Quality Assurance Agency of the Community of Castilla y León and myself on behalf of the BISITE Group.

QFORTE is an initiative promoted by the Erasmus + Program of the European Union, coordinated by the State University of Moldova. This time it is being hosted by our research group. The project aims to study and research ways of improving quality in higher education institutions.

During his speech, Mateos Roco stressed that quality has become the path to formalizing communication and equivalence between different education systems, providing an adequate, stable and secure framework for the exchange of knowledge, research products and human resources.

Learning is determined by the set of processes. Therefore, quality in learning must be equivalent to quality in processes. This makes the higher education institutions’ drive and commitment to learning a transferable value across the academic world. It has been a fruitful day and we are looking forward to the others, as the event will continue until Wednesday, 10 November. Attendees will discuss, among other things: the evaluation and accreditation of university degrees, the evaluation of teaching staff, the institutional system of surveys, suggestions and complaints.

Posted by Juan M. Corchado

Juan Manuel Corchado (15 May 1971, Salamanca, Spain) is Professor at the University of Salamanca. He has been Vice-Rector for Research from 2013 to 2017 and Director of the Science Park of the University of Salamanca. Elected as Dean of the Faculty of Science twice, he holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Salamanca and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of the West of Scotland. He leads the renowned BISITE (Bioinformatics, Intelligent Systems and Educational Technology) Research Group, created in 2000. Director of the IoT Digital Innovation Hub and President of the AIR Institute, J. M. Corchado is also Visiting Professor at the Osaka Institute of Technology since January 2015, Visiting Professor at the Universiti Malaysia Kelantan and Member of the Advisory Group on Online Terrorist Propaganda of the European Counter Terrorism Centre (EUROPOL). J. M. Corchado has been president of the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society, and academic coordinator of the University Institute for Research in Art and Animation Technology at the University of Salamanca, as well as researcher at the Universities of Paisley (UK), Vigo (Spain) and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (UK). He currently combines all his activity with the direction of Master programmes in Security, Digital Animation, Mobile Telephony, Information Systems Management, Internet of Things, Social Media, 3D Design and Printing, Blockchain, Z System, Industry 4.0, Agile Project Management, and Smart Cities & Intelligent Buildings, at the University of Salamanca and his work as editor-in-chief of the journals ADCAIJ (Advances in Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence Journal), OJCST (Oriental Journal of Computer Science and Technology) or Electronics MDPI (Computer Science & Engineering section). J. M. Corchado mainly works on projects related to Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, IoT, Fog Computing, Edge Computing, Smart Cities, Smart Grids and Sentiment Analysis. He has recently been included in the board of trustees of the AstraZeneca Foundation, along with other health professionals and researchers recognised for bringing scientific knowledge closer to society.