Andorra Private Universities Fail on Online Teaching Training

An analysis by Andorra's Agency for the Quality of Higher Education (AQUA) has revealed significant shortcomings in the training of academic staff at the country's private universities, particularly for online teaching despite these institutions' heavy reliance on digital formats.

The report highlights a stark gap: specific training for online instruction is "generally non-existent," even though it is essential for digital and hybrid learning environments. AQUA urges these universities to provide mandatory preparation for all faculty delivering virtual courses, focusing on skills such as designing online activities, using digital tools, and applying active methodologies.

The review covers five private institutions: Universitas Europaea IMF, Universitat Carlemany, UNIPRO Universitat Digital Europea, Western Europe University, and TECH Global University. It also calls for increasing the proportion of staff with doctoral qualifications, both overall and in highly specialized fields, to bolster academic quality and research capacity.

Further recommendations include lowering student-to-faculty ratios in practical teaching units to enable more personalized attention and enhance training outcomes. AQUA advises defining and publicizing target percentages for each teaching category—such as full professors, assistants, visitors, and collaborators—along with their levels of responsibility, to promote transparency, better planning, and balanced staffing.

The agency also encourages stronger links between teaching and research through measures like systematically incorporating research findings into curricula, establishing research groups tied to degree programs, and aligning student final projects with active research lines.

In a separate update, AQUA's first strategic plan for 2023-2025 has nearly completed all actions and met its objectives, according to the agency's own evaluation. Three areas remain outstanding: securing quality certification from the Ibero-American System for Quality Assurance in Higher Education; fully digitizing processes via a centralized system and automated evaluation workflows; and advancing the institutional evaluation guide, which requires legislative changes coordinated with the relevant ministry.