'Missing the Essential Aromas': Interactive Online Site Visits in the International Accreditation of Teacher Education

Within an accreditation-based approach to quality assurance in higher education, a site visit to an applicant's institution by an accrediting body is the culmination of the evidence-gathering phase of the accreditation process. During the site visit, accreditation representatives conduct standards-related observations and interviews with the applicant and its associates. However, when the pandemic curtailed travel and campuses were forced to close, traditional physical site visits were no longer possible, and were replaced by synchronous online visits. In this qualitative paper, multiple participants reflect on their experiences of participating in a cross-national virtual site visit for the accreditation of teacher education, a novel phenomenon for all parties involved, and a facet of teacher education that has not yet been addressed in the literature. Participating stakeholders, both accreditation body representatives and applicants alike, report many perceived advantages to virtual site visits, but concur that they lack what one key informant termed 'the essential aromas' of teacher education in situ. Despite this however, virtual visits are likely to be increasingly common in the future, and in light of this, inferences are drawn for optimising the quality of online interactions in the international accreditation of teacher education.