ehea meeting dublin 30th-31st january 2013. evaluating teaching and learning 1/ introduction in the...

EHEA meeting

Dublin

30th-31st January 2013

Evaluating teaching and learning

1/ IntroductionIn the U-Multirank report, one distingnishes between :

a)Focused Institutional Ranking (figures given by the

institutions)

b)Field-based ranking (quality of the teaching and teaching

resources also filed up by the institutions)

c)Field-based Ranking : student satisfaction indicators

2European Higher Education Area' conference



1/ IntroductionMost of the criteria a) and b) are quantitative, some of them

are not clearly related to the quality of teaching, e. g. gender

balance, qualification of the staff, student staff ratio. As

regards this last criteria, I think that an evaluation based on

the number of professors relatively to the number of students

is not relevant, because very dependent on the field and

pedagogic style. Measured as such the best professor is the

one from whom everybody, except one, has flied the

classroom !




1/ Introduction

Another point, if we accept the definition of an university as a

place where students are acclimated to research, there is no

criteria related to this point in teaching measure. This

deserves at least reflection and a classification of the

institutions between intensive research institutions and

others, the criteria cannot be exactly the same.




2/ Teaching evaluation must mainly rely on students•Do a systematic assessment by students of the lectures, cursus exist ? Is it public ? What kind of follow up ?

•Registration trends in a cursus ? Number of applications ?

•Happiness of the students and evaluation of the teaching facilities.

•If they have the possibility to re-start, would they choose the same institution ?

These are the main criteria. The good news is that it is said in the report, that they can be reliably measured. But who will measure ?

It is probably useful to think about to an European agency ? 5

European Higher Education Area' conference



3/ Evaluation by experts/accreditationI would like to rise another question. We know that a panel of

experts can perfectly lead an inquiry in order to estimate the

quality of :

•Cursus

•Graduation procedures

It seems that it has not be envisioned, while it can be made

for cheap, only by reading the curricula book (or site) of the

institution. It has the advantage to oblige the university to

have such a clear teaching curriculum book.




4/ Learning evaluation must rely on the quality of the output

•Percentage of students with a job after six months, 18 months (check ?), level of wage, right entry level in a company according to the level of the diploma(executive, technical level)? Happiness of the student with his/her job.

•Percentage of master students enrolling for PhD

•Number of PhD defenses

•Happiness of the employers

All are relatively difficult to measure and check, but this can be done by a specialized agency.




5/ Conclusion

Even for teaching measure, it’s remains some questions :

•Adapting the teaching criteria to research intensive

institutions

•Adopt some criteria relying on experts’ evaluation (European

experts ?)

•Create an European agency for processing satisfaction

enquiries both of students and companies



ehea meeting dublin 30th-31st january 2013. evaluating teaching and learning 1/ introduction in the...

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