International Conference: Use of AI in quality assurance

The National Agency of the Republic of Slovenia for Quality in Higher Education (NAKVIS) organized its seventh international conference this year, dedicated to the use of artificial intelligence in quality assurance. The conference took place on Wednesday, 15 October 2025, at 2:00 PM via the Zoom platform.

Following the opening address by NAKVIS Director, Dr. Franci Demšar, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jaan Aru from the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Tartu (Estonia) delivered a lecture titled “Artificial Intelligence and Natural Stupidity”, highlighting the limitations of artificial intelligence and emphasizing the importance of proper education for its users.

This was followed by a lecture from Prof. Dr. Blaž Zupan from the Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana, titled “Data-Literate Universities of the Future”, in which he addressed the need to develop data literacy, enabling the effective use and understanding of databases.

In the second part of the conference, Dr. Franci Demšar outlined areas where NAKVIS is already using or testing artificial intelligence. He emphasized that every solution will adhere to the agency’s three core values: professionalism, transparency, and continuous quality improvement in higher education.

Philipp Emanuel Friedrich from the Norwegian agency NOKUT presented “The Use of Large Language Models in Analytical Processes: Experiences from NOKUT’s Thematic Analysis”, showcasing the application of artificial intelligence in analytics. The agency used the Google NotebookLM tool; the speaker shared practical experiences and challenges when working with the tool, highlighting that AI significantly facilitated work with large documents but did not replace the work of the agency’s analysts.

Finally, Marie Gould from the Irish agency QQI presented in “Transforming External Quality Assurance in Irish Higher Education: A Generative AI Approach to Thematic Analysis” her experiences with MAXQDA, Tailwind, and Copilot. Although these tools were initially used mainly to assist in analyses, the agency is opening a broader discussion with stakeholders about the potential use of generative artificial intelligence in other tasks as well.

The conference concluded with a Q&A session and closing remarks by Dr. Boris Dular, Chair of the NAKVIS Council.

We thank all participants for their contributions and for engaging in the discussion on the future of quality assurance in higher education.

The recording of the conference is available at the following link: