REPORTING
PROFFORMANCE+ PROJECT REACHES AN IMPORTANT MILESTONE
At the invitation of the Georgian partners of the PROFFORMANCE+ project, NCEQE (National Centre for Educational Quality Enhancement) and MoES (Ministry of Education and Science), and organised by the Hungarian coordination, the Ministry of Culture and Innovation and the Tempus Public Foundation, a consortium meeting and expert workshop took place, which resulted in important progress and will soon be open to the public.
At the consortium meeting and expert workshop, which took place in Tbilisi, Georgia, from 16-18 January, partners and experts worked on the conceptual design of products expected to be available in the academic year 2024/2025.
A special feature of the event was the session organised by the Georgian NCEQE, where participants were able to hear two introductory presentations (UN Global Compact Network Georgia and Insights on impact and relevance of the project for General Education), which provided ideas on the horizontal - i.e. university partners (companies, organisations) - and vertical - i.e. public education - use of the project results. This was followed by an international panel discussion, where representatives of the Bologna Follow-Up Group, the Academic Cooperation Association and the European Students' Union gave their perspectives on the international dissemination of PROFFORMANCE products. Finally, in the spirit of diversity, partners and experts discussed in a mixed group the opportunities and challenges of the national and institutional integration of the tools.
DIVERSE PARTICIPANTS, DIVERSE ACTIVITIES AND PRODUCTS IN ONE PROJECT
Participating academics, institutions, national agencies and authorities, and national and international professional organisations representing nine countries in Europe work together to implement the project. This diversity of perspectives, experiences and practices contributes to ensuring that the project outputs provide more complex and demand-driven practical support for educators to meet the diverse needs of students in teaching and learning.
The main product of the project is the PROFFORMANCE toolkit, which comprises several products among which, the assessment tool and the teaching excellence database are now available free of charge to interested educators and institutions at tool.profformance.eu and award.profformance.eu.
The expert work has started based on the newly developed assessment questions in line with the 4 horizontal aspects of the assessment tool so that a more complex and comprehensive competence assessment system will be available in 2025. This will be complemented by the practical courses and a toolkit - of which the conceptualization and development started at the PLA - will be available from 2025 to support the work of higher education teachers.
Partners of the consortium have agreed on the primary concept of the second round of the PROFFORMANCE International Prize for Higher Education Teachers.
The second call for the project's International Teacher Award will be launched in autumn 2024. In preparation for the call, it will be worth attending this year's thematic webinars, where interested participants will be able to find out briefly what criteria will be used for applications and several good examples that can inspire ideas for applications. The first thematic webinar will take place on 28 February 2024. The event is free of charge but registration is required. Follow the project's Linkedin page and subscribe to the PROFFORMANCE Newsletter to be among the first to know about our events and the project's professional achievements.
