The meeting to launch “CALOHEE” which is funded by the EU and includes around 80 universities and university networks all over Europe such as Coimbra, Compostela, Unica, Utrecht, EUA e EURASHE, as well as the European Association for Quality Assurance, ENQA, and the students union, ESU, was held at the University of Pisa. The project, coordinated by the University of Groningen, aims to elaborate criteria to evaluate achievement in higher education, tailored to the characteristics of each subject area and national profile. The University of Pisa plays an important role within CALOHEE as a member of the Management, and is in charge of coordinating one of the pilot subject areas.
The project will initially cover five subject areas, each representing a specific academic domain: Engineering (Civil Engineering), Health Care (Nursing), Humanities (History), Natural Sciences (Physics) and Social Sciences (Education).
Tests and assessment frameworks will be developed to understand whether students from the different universities are achieving internationally defined levels of competence, which prepare them for their role in society in terms of personal development, citizenship and employability. The goal of this phase of the project is to see if it is possible to design tests that are flexible and adapt to cultural differences, which will provide tools to measure success and support universities in their efforts at continuous improvement.
The CALOHEE project is co-financed by the European Commission as a ‘Policy Support Action’ of the Erasmus+ programme and is backed by Commissioner Tibor Navracsics, responsible for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport in the European Commission.
He said: “Boosting economic growth and job creation in Europe is the top political priority of this Commission. We will only succeed in this if we help ensure that our education institutions equip people with the skills needed in a dynamic, globalised economy. That is why I am very much looking forward to the results of this study funded under our Erasmus+ programme. We need more reliable data on how higher education institutions across Europe perform in order to raise standards – and I particularly welcome the focus on competences related to employability.”
In the picture on the right: Ann Katherine Isaacs (Rector's Delegate For European Programmes, University of Pisa) and Robert Wagenaar (Project Co-ordinator / Director International TUNING Academy, University of Groningen).