On-site visit interviews in external quality assurance procedures – a linguistic, empirical approach

The contexts of these interviews are diverse complex and demanding; pitfalls and challenges are manifold. In linguistics and particularly in the field of discourse analysis a broad range of approaches can be successfully applied to analyse and understand the challenges of these interview situations. In the long term an in-depth programme of research could potentially provide agencies as well as peers with valuable advice on how to steer the interviews effectively towards constructive conversations and avoid awkward communicative situations.
In this paper we present preliminary results of a pilot study that was conducted by the ZHAW Department of Applied Linguistics in cooperation with the Swiss Agency of Accre-ditation and Quality Assurance (AAQ).

This paper was presented at EQAF and reflects the views of the named authors only.