Competence Center for (Higher) Education Research

MONITORING - EVALUATION - IMPACT EVALUATION

The Competence Center for (Higher) Education Research (KfBH), originally established in 2004, has been integrated into the Center for Quality Analysis (ZQA). The KfBH is a research institute which assesses the German education system and the shape and direction it should take in the future. The main focus is on social-scientific research and consultation in the fields of:

Quality management and research on quality assurance, teaching concepts, competence orientation and guiding principles of teaching

• Conducting student and lecturer surveys on the quality of teaching
• Development of instruments for teaching evaluation, analysis and compilation of the results
•  Analyses of the study situation and the course of studies
• Conception and support of student advisory and mentoring program

Digitalization at universities and requirements for its success

• Effectiveness of digital higher education and requirements for its success
• Learning Analytics, Blended Learning Analytics, Acadamic Analytics

• Digitalization of evaluation processes

• Digital survey and evaluation methods (analytic tools)

Alumni Studies and lifelong learning, career orientation and mobility

• Studies on the career entry and career path of university graduates
• Retrospective assessment of studies and competence transfer during studies
• Development of (subject-specific) survey instruments, evaluation and processing of results
• Academic further education, university as a provider of further education, professional further education of university graduates

Educational choices, access to and entry into higher education

• Studies on subjects and reasons for university choice
• High-school graduate surveys
• Analyses of alternative routes to higher education (non-traditional students)
• Analyses of regional mobility and location in the context of profiling and clusters of excellence, tuition fees and local access restrictions
• Analyses of the transition from school to higher education, of services to prevent students from dropping out or to help them choose a particular field of study, etc.

Higher education monitoring and study success research

• Development of indicator systems related to higher education and study programs
• Systematic processing of higher education key statistics
• Development of survey instruments on the quality of studies from a student perspective
• Higher education and education reporting
• Research on the characteristics and determining factors for academic success, on changing study subjects and on dropping out of studies
• Exmatriculation surveys

Diversity and Inclusive Higher Education

• Enabling and evaluating systematic quality development in the area of genuine participation and inclusive education
• Systematic integration of the topic of inclusion in data collection and surveys for quality management of studying and teaching at the TU Dresden
• Analyses of strengths and weaknesses at universities regarding the participation of people with disabilities and chronic illnesses, best-practice analyses

Research on demographic change, analyses and forecasts on the development of demand for education

• Analysis of the development of the demand for education and its determinants
• Development of interdisciplinary and subject-specific forecasting models for first-year students, university graduates, and labor market demand for university graduates