Communication

The website has always been EQAR’s main communication tool to address its target audiences. Since the launch of DEQAR in 2018, there has been a steady increase in website visitors. In 2023 the total came to > 79 000 visits, while there were 72 000 the previous year and 69 000 in 2021.

Almost 39% of all page views was on the DEQAR pages, followed by > 17% on the Knowledge Base pages and > 15% on the Register pages, both of which are linked from the database via the agency and country information.

Apart from the main pages mentioned above, there is a lot of other useful information on our website, although less frequently visited than the above pages:

• News
  Around 12 news-items per year are published under “News”. In our social media posts and newsletters, we link to the relevant news-item.
• Official documents
  This page can be found under “About”. You will find policies,  such as our Strategy, the Statutes, the Use and Interpretation of the ESG, the Code of Conduct, Complaints Policy, the Annual Reports and more.
• Organisation and Structure
  This page can also be found under “About”. You will find everything about the organisational structure of EQAR, including the responsibilities, composition, mandate, nomination and or terms of office of the different entities/bodies of EQAR; the General Assembly, the Register Committee, the President, the Board, the Appeals Committee and the Secretariat. A list and map of EQAR members is also available as well an overview of past General Assemblies and the relevant highlights of those.
• Topics such as Cross Border Quality Assurance, and the European Approach for QA of Joint Programmes, can be found under “Knowledge Base”.
• Events
  This page can be found under “About” and contains information about both past and upcoming events.
• Projects
  This page can also be found under “About” and contains information about both current and past projects.
• EQAR’s mission and vision and values, our history and the criteria for inclusion and can be found in Close-up under “About”.
• Essential info under “Database/find out more” features an overview of the whys and wherefores of DEQAR, including an explainer video, a Glossary and FAQ.

Newsletters
EQAR issued  five newsletters in 2023, reaching each around 850 recipients.
Newsletter topics included information about the decisions of the Register Committee, general EQAR updates, external QA activities of EQAR-registered agencies, relevant policy updates and documents with regard to QA and the use of EQAR in the national QA frameworks of the EHEA countries, DEQAR updates, project updates as well as organisational updates.

Social Media
EQAR also remained active on social media, including X (former Twitter), LinkedIn and, to a lesser extent, Facebook. In 2023, 46 posts (tweets) led to a total of > 28 000 impressions (number of times users saw the tweet on twitter) and 2 156 engagements (number of times a user has interacted with a tweet), with an average engagement rate of 8%. EQAR gained 160 new followers over the year, reaching a total of 2 060.

A total of 19 LinkedIn posts were shared in 2023, generating an average engagement rate of 9.82% (the number of interactions divided by impressions).  At the end of 2023 EQAR had around 2 250 LinkedIn followers.

The following documents were published in 2024 and were promoted in the newsletter as well as on social media:

• The EQAR Annual Report 2023 was published on the EQAR website in June 2024.
• The paper “The Future of the ESG – Reflections based on findings from the QA-FIT project” was published in May 2024.
• The IMINQA Thematic Analysis “European Approach for Quality Assurance of Joint Programmes was published in August 2024.
• The TPG-LRC CoRE report Ensuring and enhancing the quality of recognition processes – Key considerations and recommendations was published in July 2024.  As part of the working group on Quality Assurance of Recognition (along with EUA, ESU, Nuffic, HARNO and CIMEA), EQAR collaborated with an independent researcher, Maria Manatos, and made a qualitative analysis using DEQAR reports. This research dwells deeper into the work of 11 of EQAR’s registered agencies and provides insight in the coverage of ESG 1.4, with a focus on recognition. The (condensed) analysis is part of the aforementioned report.