a benchmarking visit

Just over a week ago we were visited by a Finnish delegation from Humak university. Their purpose ? to do a benchmarking visit in a few European countries. During the autumn of 2011 they had made six benchmarking visits to universities of applied sciences within their own country. Now the time had come to go abroad. At the back of their mind was to find innovative pedagogical practices.

In their university they had come to a crossroads where they now had the opportunity to renew all the curricula. Interestingly, they chose to look abroad to broaden their perspectives.
All the core elements of course programmes were covered in the list of questions they sent off to us in advance.

Exchanging information about your own procedures, methods, ideas, research, field work contacts, student satisfaction, quality assurance etc. etc is always a good test. It requires one to (re)think carefully why it is that we chose to arrange educational issues the way we did. In that respect an informal benchmarking visit from abroad can serve as a good pre-run to the real accreditation procedures that we are faced with this current year.
All in all, it was good to talk about how we have arranged our department and course programme the way we have and hear from relative outsiders that we have found interesting solutions, models, tools, strategies and procedures to make it work as a whole. Measuring the quality of a programme is not easy. The principles behind benchmarking could provide new insights into how to go about it and for example compare your programme with others to get an idea of what position you take.
This is the definition that Nuffic applies: Benchmarking is the process of comparing the quality, cost or time of what one organization does against what another organization does. The results are often used to make improvements."
In other words, our next step would be to visit Humak university within a year or two and ask them the same questions and start the comparison for real.

Added a little later .... a news item from the Nuffic website specifically dealing with developments in benchmarking, not to be missed !

getting to know NL through statistics

Coming to the Netherlands soon ? Here is a short video to prepare you !
Generally speaking, loads of statistics are produced by the Statistics Netherlands Bureau (CBS) on a daily basis. But now part of this info is brought to you in an enjoyable (under 2-minute) video clip that will make this country a little more familiar to you.



In 1.5 minutes, this explanimation shows the Netherlands by numbers on a normal day. How many babies are born, how many people die, how many people get married or divorced, and how many move house?
For those who'd like to know more, the CBS site also provides worthwhile information in English.
In case this has whetted your appetite, here's more to familiarise yourself with all things Dutch:

Resources and interesting links

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We volunteer, we learn

Sharing inspiration, ideas and resources, exchanging good practices, building on each other's strengths: that's all part of our INVEST project, a Grundtvig Learning Partnership. In the mail today we were happy to receive the link to the visual recording of our recent first meeting in Madrid. Our Spanish partner Cibervoluntarios was the producer of this short video , for a longer video recording of the talk we had with two Spanish cybervolunteers, click here. For dissemination purposes Cibervoluntarios designed this poster and brochure cover: And here's the full brochure text of the INVEST project outlining the aims and activities of this Grundtvig Learning Partnership, financially supported by the EU Lifelong Learning Programme.

INVEST brochure text

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the beauty of a Grundtvig Learning Partnership

By now, based on my experiences of the last 4 years, I've become a great fan of Grundtvig Learning Partnerships! Having recently returned from the first meeting in a new European project of this type I feel I must share this idea here.
Grundtvig ?? Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783–1872) was a Danish clergyman and writer. He advocated 'life enlightenment', aimed at giving each individual, regardless of age or background, the opportunity to learn throughout life. The objective of learning was twofold: to give personal fulfillment to the individual and to ensure the active participation of all citizens in public life.
As a learning method, Grundtvig advocated the use of dialogue and the spoken word. He further believed that teaching should be based on and related to real-life experiences and not abstract matters.
The spirit of Grundtvig is clearly present within the idea of the learning partnerships as the main focus is placed on relationships and face-to-face communication.
Being a participant in such a partnership comes down to learning on many fronts, from and about the European context, while sharing and collaborating on common issues in an innovative way. It allows you to see for yourself the actual context in which your European counterparts operate on a daily basis. In learning partnerships the emphasis is clearly on the process of European cooperation and the enrichment of everyday practice through professional exchange and partnering.
In contrast to multilateral projects there is not the administrative burden of documenting every single item and the strict adherence to the work packages in order to deliver a number of clearly defined products.
That doesn't mean that "anything goes" in projects like these.
It does mean that if you come up with a good plan and a number of solid European partners, in combination with a set of concrete activities to work on predefined objectives staggered over a period of 2 years, you stand a good chance of being awarded with a grant from your own National Agency.
For me nothing can beat a Grundtvig learning partnership project when going international in adult education. Let's hope that in the new Lifelong Learning Programme from 2014 onwards this fabulous opportunity for European cooperation will be continued.

Detailed information about Grundtvig Learning Partnerships can be found here.

First INVEST project meeting in Madrid

The first meeting with all the partners in the new European INVEST project is now behind us: time to look back !
In the run up to the meeting, an ambitious agenda had been designed in an interactive way and well in advance. To ensure that all the intended goals for this kick-off meeting were met the original application form had been studied intensively again and the essential ingredients were reviewed on the spot to refresh our memories.
All 5 partners had been preparing for the meeting and gave presentations to familiarise the delegates with the contexts they were working in and to share good practices in line with the aims of the project. Within the 2-day time frame we succeeded admirably to get the project well under way and to broaden understanding of the key issues in the project: volunteering and learning. Among others we discussed the draft list of contents of the booklet that the project members are working out as one of the major results of this Grundtvig learning partnership.
Many issues were clarified and important interactive and detailed planning was done towards the second meeting when the European volunteers will be involved and invited to the workshops the partnership will develop for them.
Towards the end of the meeting most of us had gained valuable new insights in the volunteering infrastructures, realities and experiences of the other partners. An interesting new insight to me was the distinction between intentional learning by volunteers, that is volunteering to learn, and unintentional learning, that is learning through volunteering without any intention at all to learning anything, on the other hand. This distinction may be two sides of the same coin, but they are worthwhile exploring in our approach, while applying a needs analysis and creating educational opportunities for volunteers.

Clipped from: www.plataformavoluntariado.org (share this clip)

And after the inspiring and productive visit to the Plataforma del Voluntariado de Espana we concluded our meeting, said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. What had impressed us most however was the many efforts that our Spanish host had made, the Cibervoluntarios foundation, to make us feel at home in Madrid. It is hard to imagine a warmer welcome than the one we received from Yolanda, Angel and Jorge. Many thanks to them once more ! However, let's not forget that the other partners also deserve to be thanked for their many contributions and for establishing such a good and positive working atmosphere, so thank you Silvia and Glenda from Ciessevi, Milan, Steven from Roehampton University, London, and Ole, Kirsten and Rikke from the Center for frivilligt socialt arbejde, Odense, Denmark.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This blog post reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained herein.
For a visual report of our meeting, click here .