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 !

Hacettepe University delegation visits Rotterdam

Today we received two visitors from the social work department at Hacettepe University, Ankara. It is this university which can pride itself on having the oldest social work department in all of Turkey (presently 51 years old). We learned that the 1999 Marmara earthquake led to an increase in the demand for social workers, which led in turn to an expansion of social work course programmes across the country. There was a clear need for individual counselling which could help people gain awareness about their problems and gain the skills to use their inner resources to cope with the after-quake issues.
We were told that much like other departments in Turkish universities the social work course programme was American-oriented. Another important influence came from (writer, academic and consultant on social work) Malcolm Payne, who, by the way, among many other things, keeps a fascinating blog site on Self positioning I found out just now.
Most social work graduates in Turkey find jobs in organisations under the ministry of social policies, the ministry of health or the ministry of justice. Apart from that, social workers can also find employment in private social work organisations and NGO's. We were told that there is a real need for social workers at the moment as the number of qualified social workers is low.

It was all in all a good opportunity to get to know each other a lot better and explore opportunities to cooperate with each other. Trying to establish opportunities for sustainable cooperation we decided to start with teaching staff mobility, starting this year. By constructively embedding the perspectives of the other partner in current courses lecturers as well as students on either side can benefit. And this can be arranged on an annual basis for example. Opening up opportunities for student exchange on a reciprocal basis was another idea that was explored, next to organising studytrips to each other's countries. Altogether we had fruitful discussions !

dear international students: welcome to Rotterdam !

This week we could welcome the new group of international students at our Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences. And what a large and diverse group it is with students from 10 different countries !
For the kick off we had chosen the 11th floor of the high rise as our venue, which meant that we had an excellent overview of Rotterdam lying at our feet.
Especially Monday and Tuesday we spent time in getting to know each other better by way of ice breakers, games, and all sorts of introductory activities, which was a good start. However, it was the international buddies that had been doing the most important tasks in getting the students landed in Rotterdam after arrival from their respective countries. Collecting them from Schiphol or otherwise, gathering keys, taking them to their accommodation etc.: a big thank you to them!
Later in the week the first lessons were given and the serious work started.
Here's a visual impression of the first Monday meetings:

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Learning makes you happy, says study

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

Learning makes you healthy, satisfied and happy and improves social solidarity, according to the first results of the European Lifelong Learning Indicators (ELLI) study.
ELLI is the first European comparative lifelong learning index and as such provides a useful tool for gaining an overview of the situation of lifelong learning across the EU.
The ELLI project was launched by Bertelsmann Stiftung in January 2008 in an effort to make the concept of lifelong learning more understandable and transparent. It is meant as a resource for political decision makers and educational institutions, private industry, academics and journalists, as well as all of Europe’s citizens who want to know more about learning in their own country and the rest of Europe – what it entails, and the impact it has.
ELLI measures learning throughout the different stages of life from ‘cradle to grave’ and across the different learning environments of school, community, work and home life, so even taking into account relevant activities, such as sport, culture, voluntary involvement as well as participation in courses within adult education centres.
The overall results show that the Nordic countries Denmark, Sweden and Finland and, in addition, the Netherlands rank highest. Particularly Denmark and Sweden have been the most successful countries in Europe at implementing the idea of lifelong learning. The top performers are followed by a group of countries that consist of mainly Central European and Anglo-Saxon countries. The next group of countries, which are below the EU average, are from Southern and Eastern Europe and range from the Czech Republic to Poland, with Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania at the bottom end of the table.
It was especially the preface to the publication that I found inspiring, under the heading: "Learning, lifting the treasure within". Here's a relevant paragraph I'd like to quote: "Lifelong and life-wide learning is about the whole person. It is about allowing every individual to participate in society and making our society more cohesive. Learning enables people to develop to their full potential and to play an active role in their environments. It allows them to try new things and to harness untapped talents. Along with enhancing employment opportunities and professional standing, learning lays the groundwork for fulfillment in life.
Moreover, learning cannot and should not start or end in the classroom or in other educational institutions. We learn on the job, as members of associations or political organizations, in our families, during our leisure time and in our communities as well. In order to make lifelong learning a reality, it is important to embrace and connect all learning stages, types and places and to link this process with the wider spectrum of benefits that flow from it."
In my view, far too often and too long learning has only been associated with teaching and instruction within schools or prescribed learning frameworks. Fortunately, we now see increasing recognition of learning achieved outside the formal curriculum, e.g. also via so-called Recognition of Acquired Competencies procedures. A most welcome development in the right direction, providing easier access to other learning tracks! However, generally speaking there is still insufficient appreciation for informal, experiential or non formal learning overall. Let's hope the ELLI study and its preface will be read widely across Europe.

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.