E-XCELLENCE NEXT Report Review-at-a-distance MESI (Moscow) and MESI BRANCHES (Minsk, Yaroslav, Tver, Yerevan)

E-learning has become mainstream provision in European higher education and is essential in supporting lifelong learning and internationalisation. By becoming integral part of higher education, e-learning should also be integral part of the QA systems, internal and external, with related innovative and appropriate criteria. In the E-xcellence project (EADTU) an instrument is developed under the e-learning programme that creates an opportunity for the existing channels in QA to adopt new quality guidelines for increased quality, accessibility and attractiveness. As the E-xcellence instrument supplements existing QA systems with e-learning specific issues and addresses directly the higher education and adult education sector, it can be integrated within the existing QA frameworks. In the past 2 stages in which E-xcellence was developed and promoted by and within open and blended universities and QA agencies, it has proven to be a valuable and valued open source tool. In a third step EADTU wants to serve universities Europe wide with an open and updated “quality assurance in e-learning” instrument. One of the institutions where the E-xcellence instrument is introduced is The Moscow State University of Economics, Statistics and Informatics (MESI). This university made use of reviews using E-xcellence on two previous occasions (2009 and 2011). This report describes the introduction of the E-xcellence instrument in a Review-at-a-distance. The review was an online seminar of an E-xcellence Review team with representatives of MESI and the MESI branches on June 21, 2012. The report contains presentations given by representatives of the different programs and feedback of the Review team.