Transparency through a grading table

Through a white, white landscape I travelled by train to the Nuffic in the Hague to learn about an instrument that can solve the issue of disputes about the interpretation of grades received here in the Netherlands and abroad. Most people familiar with international student mobility know that grading varies considerably from one country to another. Students returning from a study abroad experience hand over a transcript of records or a list with credits gained at another university and expect to see these credits registered. It is at this point that difficulties arise: what is the exact equivalent of a particular grade in the home country? what is a fair conversion of grades gained in another institution abroad ?
And that's where the grading table comes in. With each country and each higher education institution having different approaches to assessment and applying different grading scales, it is vital to become transparent and produce a grade distribution table at the degree programme level (and/or the faculty level) and demonstrate what percentage of students received e.g. grade 6 out of 10, grade 7 out of 10 etc. This enables partner universities to interpret the grades awarded in your specific context. And then the next step is to compare the grading tables of the home and host university and identify the corresponding grades.
This procedure not only indicates the academic performance of a student with reference to the group, but also provides transparent data on how grades are actually applied in a specific context. The result: a fair interpretation of grades, the advantage: this is widely applicable across Europe and the globe.

A crucial issue in this process is identifying the reference group for which the grade distribution table is calculated. Another is collecting all the grades of the identified reference group over a period of time of at least three years. The resulting grading table can then be stated on all transcripts of records and diploma supplements for easy reference. For this workshop a number of Bologna experts were invited as speakers, both from the Netherlands and from Flanders.
The message was abundantly clear: to bring about transparency in higher education grading tables are a must and prove to be an invaluable tool.
(And yes, once again we heard how "economical" the grading culture in the Netherlands is. Remember the old adage: on a scale of 10, 9 is for the teacher, 10 is for God, so 8 is really good. Not easy to explain to your international contacts.)

an ECA certificate on internationalisation

We were the first to hear of it: there are serious plans for a European certificate on internationalisation, to lift national initiatives to the EU level. It is the European Consortium for Accreditation of higher education(ECA) that will be working on this from the start of July 2011.
The news was launched today at the special NVAO seminar about assessment of internationalisation and internationalisation as a distinctive quality.
For my international readers: NVAO (in Dutch: Nederlands-Vlaamse Accreditatieorganisatie) is the Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders. It was established by international treaty and it ensures the quality of higher education in the Netherlands and Flanders.
The certificate is seen as a specific "reward" for good and excellent forms of internationalisation and is meant only for the happy few (they called it "the Champions league"). They are not looking for mass certification, we were told by the chairman of the ECA who made the announcement, Rolf Heusser.
The rationale for an ECA certificate was that international projects need a corresponding award. Besides, there is a high demand for such an award coming from the higher education institutions themselves. All this fits well with ECA aims, know-how and philosophy, which is the mutual recognition of accreditation and quality assurance decisions. Other aims of ECA are: mutual learning and disseminating best practices in accreditation as well as providing transparent information on quality and supporting internationalisation of institutions and students.

Clipped from: www.ecaconsortium.net (share this clip)

LEVEL5, at a glance

In the beautiful and peaceful setting of Alden Biesen castle, Belgium, a European conference took place on the validation of informal learning. It was announced as a practical and active conference bringing together practitioners and educational experts from a variety of European countries. And indeed, after some keynotes and an overview of some informal learning projects, the afternoon was fully dedicated to getting to grips with the LEVEL5 system, an instrument meant to validate informal or non-formal learning.
Just 2 weeks prior to this meeting I had attended a seminar session where a speaker had pressed an urgent message on his audience: to sustain good practices it's of vital importance to demonstrate to your funders or sponsors that the projects you have run have been worthwhile, in the sense that the beneficiaries can be shown to have made progress in one way or another. And exactly that had in the past often proved to be a bottleneck. At the end of a project many people show enthusiasm , new innovative approaches are tried out and tested to the satisfaction of many, but in the end, as the projects have been funded with temporary money, good practices in the social domain die a slow death as the impact is not or inadequately demonstrated via a survey, research or any other validating tool to assess success.
LEVEL5 is a welcome development, in that it could substantiate exactly that: this approach can establish competence development of (adult) learners in informal and non formal learning contexts.

Learning results can be displayed and (via a 3-dimensional web-based cube) visualised in 3 different dimensions, namely cognitive, activity related and affective competences (sometimes referred to as Head, Hand and Heart).
Two dimensional charts are also available to display the learning results which were recorded after a learning project. This truly appears to be a promising development from which many adult learners and adult learning providers may benefit.
More detailed information about LEVEL5, including some screenshots of the software, is available via the REVEAL community website.

Sharing is multiplying

A super experience, you share a powerpoint on slideshare and the site points you to related presentations. I had seen it before, clicked on some, saw some interesting things, but today I was taken by surprise.
This is what I came across:

Teaching, learning and assessment communication skills with children and young people in Social Work education

View more presentations from foreman.

Spot on ! In our search for international perspectives on social work and international literature this is a fortunate find surprisingly presented by slideshare technology. A big thank you !