Monitoring Contingency Meeting 2018

3-5 October 2018

Asia Europe Institute, ASEM Room - Level 1, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur

Building Social Research Capacities in Higher Education Institutions in Lao PDR and Malaysia (BRECIL)

Executive Summary

The Quality Management Monitoring Contingency Meeting 2018 was held for three days with representatives from all partner and programme universities. The purpose of the meeting was to check the progress of quality management, share inputs and forward planning related to QA group in this project. It was also aimed to improve partner communications as well.

Three days meeting (October 3rd to 5th, 2018)

Day 1

Professor Low convened the meeting by welcoming everyone and thanked all partners for their presence. She conveyed Prof Azirah’s apology to everyone, as the latter cannot be with us during this meeting, due to medical reason. Prof Low started the meeting with her presentation on Quality Management, its activities and outputs. She explained partner’s involvement in quality and how it relates to the project. After the coffee break, the first QM individual institutional report (UM) was presented by Professor Low. This was followed by presentations from each quality manager or representative from each partner and programme universities. These session were moderated by Dr Sinan from SDI University and discussed about these reports.

Dr Sinan discussed on challenges and risks faced by each partner and programme universities. Different institutional improvement were implemented in the project. In addition, Mr. Yee Chee Leong, the project manager discussed on how project quality may improved from one cycle to another. Then, he explained how the quality work package can facilitates project implementation and project cooperation. He also suggested to produce relevant material evidence for audit purposes.
Prof Low concluded the day and emphasises the importance of QM and how it was linked with other work packages.

Day 2

The second day of the meeting, Dr Sinan presented on risk matrix in the BRECIL project. He deliberated on the various risks collected or gathered by the partners and provided some structured risk factors to evaluate some operational processes in the project. Furthermore, he explained about the short term and long term impact risks and stakeholders involvement in the project. Subsequently, he explained about the pre and post assessment on risk matrix. After the lunch break, participants had a brief Skype session with Professor Andreas Stoffers. Then, the meeting provided all participants an opportunity to work in groups to discuss the various risk factors. The participants discussed the risks that they were dealing with to generate some ideas for risk mitigation strategies. Dr Sinan was tasked to revise all risk factors which had been discussed and send the revised version to everyone.
The EU Evaluation report and QM outputs were presented by Mr Yee Chee Leong. He talked about the EU’s suggestions or recommendations of the project. He also highlighted the importance of relevant feedback and comments about the project such as the need for needs analysis (on research governance) for the Malaysian HEIs, systematic selection process of participants for research training and study tours, and so on.

Day 3

Professor Jan Folkert Deinum from Groningen University started the day by sharing some information on research governance pertaining to his University and generated some group discussions about research governance in each Partner HEIs. He showcased the guidelines for the KPIs of the various academic positions, such as, Professor, Assistant Professor and the quality assurance of research in GRON. After the sharing session, Professor Low presented the findings of the annual online quality survey. The survey was aimed at respondents consisting of the QM leads, partner coordinators and team members that focus on project communication, cooperation and performance between partners. She hoped these results will invite further improvements in the project in the following year.

Professor Low closed the event on behalf of Professor Azirah, thanked all the partners for their inputs and active participation wished everyone a safe journey back home.

QM Contingency Meeting Participants

1. BRECIL Team

University of Malaya (UM)

No.	Name and surname	Designation
1	Mr. Yee Chee Leong	Project Manager for BRECIL, Asia-Europe Institute.
2	Prof. Dr. Low Wah Yun	QM Lead for BRECIL, University of Malaya.
3	Mdm. Alliyah Nuha Azman	Project Officer, Centre for ASEAN Regionalism University of Malaya & Asia-Europe Institute.
4	Ms. Marsha Prema Priya	Research Assistant, Centre for ASEAN Regionalism University of Malaya & Asia-Europe Institute.
5	Ms. Azrin bt Mohd Kasim	Frontier Research Cluster, University of Malaya.
6	Ms. Nuratiqah bt Mohamad Nopi	Wellness Research Cluster, University of Malaya.

**Note: Participant number 5 & 6 only attended for Day 3 (Discussion on DEV 1 & DEV 2)

Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM)

No.	Name and surname	Designation
1	Dr. Hariharan N Krishnasamy	Project Coordinator, Universiti Utara Malaysia
2	Assoc. Prof. Dr. Azman Yasin	Member

University of Groningen (GRON), the Netherlands

No.	Name and surname	Designation
1	Prof. Jan Folkert Deinum	Team member for BRECIL(Research Governance),University of Groningen, the Netherlands
2	Dr. Louward van de Duim	Team member for BRECIL (QA), University of Groningen, the Netherlands

University of Applied Languages – SDI Munich, Germany

No.	Name and surname	Designation
1	Dr. Sinan Asci	Team member for BRECIL (QA), University of Applied Languages / SDI Munich
2	Prof Andreas Stoffer (Skype)	Coordinator, SDI Munich

Souphanouvong University (SU)

No.	Name and surname	Designation
1	Mrs. Bounthieng Vongsouangtham	Project Coordinator (SU)
2	Vikate PHANNALATH	Team member for BRECIL (QA)
3	Somchay Makessavanh	Team member for BRECIL (QA)