On 11-12 June 2025, a member of the MusiQuE Office, Ana Alvarez, attended a workshop organised by ENQA, in collaboration with HAKA (the Estonian Quality Agency for Education) on the responsible use of AI in quality assurance, in Tallinn (Estonia).

The event was attended by representatives from more than 40 national and subject-specific quality assurance agencies from Europe and beyond. The workshop included plenary and breakout sessions where participants were invited to jointly reflect on QA agencies’ vision on their supporting role for HEIs, and the implications, opportunities and threats that the use of AI tools might pose for these and the agencies’ own activities.

The workshop started with a keynote presentation by Jaan Aru (Professor at the Institute of Computer Science, University of Tartu), explaining the main differences between human mental processes and AI skills and its functioning methods. After that, Eve Alcock from QAA and Marie Gould from QQI, respectively introduced their work in supporting the HE sector to accommodate the use of AI (i.e. by redesigning assessment processes) and exploring the use of AI tools in their agencies’ activities (i.e. conducting thematic analyses).

Furthermore, José Luis Mateo, from AQU Catalunya presented his exploratory work on the potential use of AI-powered machine learning to predict quality risk in higher education study programmes based on statistical data collected in past review procedures.

Drawing from these, participants discussed and brainstormed during a World Café on their agencies’ supporting role for HEIs in the use of AI, and collaborated to dedicated session to the application of AI tools in their activities, drafting potential principles to adopt on the use of AI for external QA.

For more information about the workshop, please visit the ENQA website.