At Ghent University, we strive to educate people who dare to think about the challenges of tomorrow. For that purpose, we provide education that is embedded in six strategic objectives: Think Broadly, Keep Researching, Cultivate Talent, Contribute, Extend Horizons, Opt for Quality.
Ghent University continuously focuses on quality assurance and quality culture. The Ghent University's quality assurance system offers information on each study programme’s unique selling points, and on its strengths and weaknesses with regard to quality assurance.

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Ghent University's Education Objectives

Quality Assurance at Ghent University

1. A thorough understanding of the role of communication in general, and the media in particular, in society today and beyond: our programme offers a deeper understanding of today’s society - and of living together in general. By means of an in-depth study of key communication processes and communication systems that make living together and even society at large possible, you will gain new insights into the society of the future.
2. A diversity of perspectives: you learn to study communication from diverse theoretical and practical perspectives: psychology, sociology, economy, history, technology, ethics, .... All our course units focus on diversity and intercultural dialogue.
3. A critical and analytical attitude: ours is a hands-on programme with, in addition to theory, a focus on the practice of ‘doing communication studies’ You acquire a wide range of quantitative and qualitative research skills and become a specialist in the critical and nuanced analysis of (often complex) communication.
4. Education and research go hand in hand: opting for our study programme means choosing premium-quality education based on cutting-edge research. The main curricular strands in our Bachelor’s curriculum and the four main subjects of our Master’s curriculum are each grounded in a corresponding research group. This guarantees that the newest academic insights and research expertise are fed into the curriculum immediately.
5. In tune with the labour market: throughout the programme you will hone our professional skills and come into contact with the broad professional field. We achieve this through the work placement, among other things, as well as our specific research projects in collaboration with the professional field, guest lectures by professionals, company visits, or other extra-curricular activities. In other words, our academic-scientific education with its strong ties to daily practice and current affairs ensures a smooth entry into the labour market.

1. Revised Bachelor’s and Master’s curriculum: media and communication are a fast- and ever-changing field. To keep abreast with these changes, we have intentionally chosen to invest in an innovative curriculum. We are a socially and academically relevant study programme, and we have optimised the current curriculum accordingly by highlighting and building on existing strengths. In addition to the solid theoretical groundwork with room for multi- and interdisciplinarity, and a further honing of the students’ critical thought, we also focus on professional skills. Thus we prepare our students for the labour market of the future. The new curriculum also offers students more room to personalise their profile, and a broad range of electives for in-depth study. It allows them to become independent, critical communication professionals.
2. Active teaching methods focused on knowledge creation: our programme places great store by Ghent University’s credo “Dare to Think”. Using active teaching methods like workshops, portfolios, and microteaching, we involve our students actively in their learning process. This also includes contributing actively to specific research projects in one of our four research centres. Our focus is to lead students towards creating new academic insights, which culminate in their Bachelor's and Master's dissertations.
3. Talent development for students: the four main subjects we offer allow you to customise the curriculum to your interests and talents. Our broad range of teaching methods stimulates a wide range of talent. Take, for instance, the "Master Challenges", where we bridge the gap between academia and the professional field through research assignments commissioned by organisations and companies, or our work placement opportunities, the course unit on Community Service Learning, which focuses on social engagement through fieldwork.
4. Internationalisation: we have invested heavily in internationalisation in the past few years. We extensively participate in the Erasmus programme and continuously expand our network of international partners. As a result, our students can embark on a study-abroad initiative in the third year of the Bachelor's and in the Master's programme. We provide English-taught course units to accommodate our "stay-at-home" students in honing their language skills and coming into contact with incoming international Erasmus students, with whom they collaborate actively in class assignments. Finally, our emphasis on intercultural competencies in various course units provides an international and global perspective.
5. Strong stakeholder participation is essential to pursue our education policy and develop our curriculum. These stakeholders include the professional field, the teaching staff, our alumni, and you. We promote short lines of communication between our lecturers and students through Ufora (the electronic learning environment), a prominent presence on social media platforms, availability before and after classes, weekly office hours and individual appointments. We also keep our stakeholders close by inviting (former) students and the professional field to sit on our advisory board, contribute to ongoing research projects, and participate in our broader education policy.

1. Guidance and feedback: in recent years, traditional lectures have largely made way for more active teaching methods. These teaching methods call for more guidance and (interim) feedback, as students have rightly pointed out to us, for instance on the Master's dissertation and the various assignments we set them. Despite the large student numbers, we have recently adopted a new approach that allows us to streamline student guidance.
2. Student and staff mobility: we have invested strongly in internationalisation and the current curriculum offers various study-abroad opportunities. There is, however, still room for improvement when it comes to boosting incoming and outgoing student and staff mobility.
3. Lastly, we are working towards embedding the external perspective in our study programme (policy) further in a structural manner.

This study programme is accredited by the Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders (Dutch: NVAO). Accreditation was extended following the positive outcome of the institutional review in 2022. Programme quality was validated by a quality review, i.e. a screening of the Education Monitor by the Education Quality Board. The resulting Quality Assurance Resolution (in Dutch) can be found here.

This information was last updated on 22/08/2024.
In case of questions or suggestions with regard to the publicly available information, please contact the study programme.