The ASEAN University Network-Quality Assurance (AUN-QA) Network, which was initiated since 1998, aims to develop a holistic quality assurance system to raise academic standards and enhance education, research and service among its member universities through the use of its policy and criteria. In rising to the challenges of the ASEAN Community, the AUN-QA Network has to be looking forward to advocating a harmonized framework for quality assurance in higher education within and outside ASEAN. There are 11 criteria which have been developed in the 3rd version of the AUN-QA model for programme level covering three dimensions on quality of input, quality of process and quality of output. This paper will present research and practice on alignment and mapping from CDIO standards as quality toolkits to meet the AUN-QA criteria in the view of outcome-based education (OBE) approach. First, the study outlines an in-depth literature review on the comparison between the AUN-QA criteria and the CDIO standards. Next, the mapping details of the AUN-QA criteria and the CDIO standards according to their alignment are presented. Third, the paper presents the CDIO implementation by The University of Danang - University of Science and Technology (UD-DUT) to fulfil aligned requirements of the AUN-QA assessment at the program level. It is concluded that the implementation of the CDIO framework has demonstrated a positive accelerating OBE implementation and, thus, to meet the AUN-QA expectation. Exploitation of CDIO standards implementation has reformed the UD-DUT educational system to leverage remarkably multi-dimensional quality of the university quality assurance system and study programs. A selected set of good practices on CDIO implementation are recommended for further discussion and possibly usage by the AUN-QA community for AUN-QA assessment effectiveness.
