Project No. 2019-1-IT02-KA203-063157
Project duration: 28 September 2019–27 July 2022
Project co-funder: EU program Erasmus+
Project coordinator: Università degli Studi dell’Aquila (Italy)
Project partners:
Universitat de Barcelona (Spain)
Universitatea Valahia din Targoviste (Romania)
Szczecinska Szkola Wyzsza Collegium Balticum (Poland)
Vilniaus universitetas (Lithuania)
Šiuolaikinių didaktikų centras (Lithuania)
Project team
PROJECT RELEVANCE
Higher education institutions in the European Union are key centers where students are taught what is known, where the unknown is explored, where new knowledge is created, and where critically thinking individuals are nurtured – the intellectual potential needed to address the challenges facing society. It is therefore clear that European citizens have a strong interest in the quality of higher education systems.
Within the European Union, there are significant differences in how Member States and higher education institutions promote the quality of teaching and learning. With the emergence of competitive research funding and international university rankings based on research results, the quality of teaching often takes a back seat. At the same time, it is argued that good teaching is essential for students to acquire the knowledge, skills, and experience they need (SWD (2017) 164 p. 35–39).
Continuing professional development for primary and secondary school teachers is taken for granted, but when it comes to higher education, there seems to be a widespread assumption that such professional development for faculty members is not necessary. Given the differences within the higher education sector, it may be difficult to define a universal standard of quality teaching and learning that applies to all, but this hardly justifies the current reluctance to acknowledge that professional pedagogical skills are needed by those who are already teaching or intend to become teachers. A key challenge for the higher education sector is to fully professionalize the teaching community (High Level Group on the Modernisationof Higher Education, 2013, p. 12–18).
High Level Group on the Modernisationof Higher Education presents recommendations for improving the quality of teaching and learning:
1. Public authorities responsible for higher education should ensure that a sustainable, well-funded system is established to support higher education institutions’ efforts to improve the quality of teaching and learning.
2. Teaching and learning in higher education must be understood as a shared activity of all faculty and students, requiring holistic quality management.
3. Create conditions in the higher education sector where both teaching and research are valued equally, so that higher education faculty members know they must invest not only in their subject-matter expertise but also in becoming effective teachers.
4. Every higher education institution should develop and implement a strategy for maintaining and continuously improving the quality of teaching and learning, allocating the necessary human and financial resources to this task and incorporating this priority into its overall mission, giving teaching the same importance as research.
5. The higher education institution must support its faculty through various measures, ranging from continuing education and professional development courses to individual mentoring, as well as measures that strengthen collaboration among faculty teams.
In implementing the project, the project partners rely on the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG, 2015) and focus on the following internal quality assurance indicators:
1. Information management – key performance indicators.
2. Student-centered learning, teaching, and assessment – the typology and appropriateness of indicators used to evaluate the quality of teaching.
PROJECT AIM
Improve the quality of higher education by implementing systematic measures that integrate the principles of instructional assessment, pedagogical training, faculty professionalism, and the adoption of instructional innovations.
PROJECT OBJECTIVES
1. Provide greater opportunities to demonstrate the quality of teaching by obtaining integrated data.
2. Provide greater opportunities to compare teaching outcomes across higher education institutions.
3. Enhance the capacity of higher education institutions to pursue institutional goals of continuous improvement in teaching by implementing a data-driven system for recognizing teaching quality.
4. Promote the professional development of faculty members to enhance the quality of teaching.
PROJECT TARGET GROUPS
The project is addressed to all members of the academic community, specifically:
- university students;
- university faculty members teaching undergraduate (bachelor’s) degree programs.
PROJECT INTELLECTUAL OUTPUTS
Teaching Quality Indicators Framework (2023)
In order to understand the national and international context and the type of indicators used, a major review of the literature, in particular of institutional relationships, national and international research and practices, was undertaken. As a result of this overview, a selection and classification of the framework of quality indicators of teaching at multiple levels within universities, i.e. institutional, planning and individual, has been developed.
The Teaching Quality Indicators Framework is not and does not pretend to be an exhaustive list of all relevant indicators, but serves to contribute to a broader discussion on teaching quality in higher education by addressing the need to seek empirical evidence of teaching quality through a rigorous examination of empirical studies in the literature.
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University Teacher Profile Learning/Teaching Focused and Centred on Student Characteristics (2023)
The profile of university lecturer offers the opportunity to clarify what characteristics an ideal didactically qualified teacher possesses and what skills, expectations and training he needs to operate effectively in university contexts. The profile has been created to support, in fact, those who work in university contexts and who need to develop a deeper understanding of the teaching role of the teacher, to reflect on how to allow students to learn better, to motivate them and to lead them towards educational success.
The design of a desirable profile of university lecturer responds, therefore, to the effort or to identify ambitious requirements, characteristics, attributes and elements of the “didactic personality” of a teacher who aims to achieve key educational objectives and is ready to perform demanding tasks with intentionality, awareness and professional responsibility, contributing to the development of students’ skills and knowledge, expanding their university experience.
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Methodological-Didactics Guidelines for the “Learning/Teaching Focused Teacher” (2023)
The Guidelines aime at investigating and identifying empirical evidence of high quality teaching and provide a guide for university professors about the methodological-didactic aspects and factors on which teachers should focus to allow them to develop proposals and activate qualitatively appreciable teaching interventions on the design level and to support and implement quality teaching over time.
These Methodological Guidelines can be used by teachers helping them to develop and activate a quality didactic action system and a didactic-organizational model (also in terms of programming, planning and proceduralization) such as to ensure the implementation of a flexible teaching in terms of design, evaluation and documentation of the cultural proposal and didactic intervention, while adopting a strategic approach that supports decision-making processes in context.
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PROJECT RESULTS
The project had a positive impact on:
teaching staff, by increasing their involvement in improving the quality of teaching;
students, by providing them with the opportunity to gain a more valuable learning experience and achieve better learning outcomes.
The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.