Institutional visits

PROFFORMANCE Assessment tool - pilot testing is on their way

 

Due to the pandemic situation, the pilot testing of the PROFFORMANCE Assessment tool have been implemented online. It meant that the originally planned physical visits of national experts to the participating institutions has been replaced by an international kick off webinar, the online filling out of the questionnaires, and finally an international online feedback session.

 

As the tool is still in its pilot form, it is available only in English, in google drive. It was supposed to be tested by 2-3 instituions by country, but seeing the huge interest from universities, we opened this possibility to those who would opt to participate and acknowledged by the consortium partners.

The final version of the tool will be available at the national languages on a specifically designed platform as an open source material from automn 2022.

 

The PROFFORMANCE Assessment tool

The PROFFORMANCE consortium is honoured to announce that it has developed a well-rounded assessment tool for teachers’ performance evaluation at higher education institutions. Well-rounded means that it is 3 dimensional: 

  1.  it covers a wide-range of HE teacher activities related to teaching and learning, 
  2.  it also evaluates teachers’ performance from the view of the teachers themselves, their peers, their students - and it also intends to give the possibility for managers and even stakeholders to give feedback (these parts are not yet ready), 
  3.  and it offers the possibility to draw attention to the European Union’s and European Higher Education Area’s priorities such as: digitalization, internationalization, inclusion and (sustainability). 

How and by whom was it developed?

The tool development has been an almost one-year process with the involvement of the PROFFORMANCE consortium partners with more than 20 international experts, and with the contribution of the evaluating stakeholders. The development process started in November 2020 and finished in October 2021. PROFFORMANCE experts worked together online synchronously in the frame of peer learning activities and working group meetings and asynchronously on online co-working platforms with the involvement of external experts and stakeholders as well. After collecting HE teachers tasks and roles, the structurization and rationalization process started and the EU and EHEA priorities have been defined as horizontal aspects. Finally upon the model of the self-assessment version of the assessment tool, the peer and student versions have been adjusted as well. 

 

What does it look like?

The test version of the assessment tool contains 3 elements: the self, the peer and the student part. Its demo version is already available at tool.proffromance.eu. 

What is it good for?

The tool will be useful to complement or be embedded into the existing quality assurance systems of the HEIs, and it is a tool to be used for teacher performance evaluation with special regard to T&L in international cooperation such as strategic partnerships, joint or double degrees, knowledge alliances or the newly formed European University Alliances. 

The tool will provide data on strengths and weaknesses at individual and institutional level, and provides evidence for (further)developing institutional T&L strategies, teacher performance and career management systems and in-service and further training.

What is the aim of pilot testing?

Although a wide-range of HE experts, partners and stakeholders have been involved in the development process, before the finalization of the tool it is necessary to get feedback from external reviewers and quality assurance experts. The feedback of the end-users, that of HEIs and HE teachers, students and managers are valuable and crucial to have a tool which can be used at HEIs at the EHEA.

 

The process of the pilot testing

Schedule

23rd November 2021 3.00 PM CET

 

ZOOM webinar recorded and distributed

Introductory meeting explanation of the testing process for institutions

1. presentation of the tool

2. guidelines for testing

3. QA

All partners and HEI representatives

24rd November - 20th January 2022

Testing within the institutions

HEIs with technical assistance of respective partners

End January 2022

Interviews and feedback with/from participating HEIs

All partners and HEIs + PROFFORMANCE experts - CWG

 

The test version of the tool

1.Self-assessment questionnaire - deadline: 20th January 2022

- to be completed individually by the teacher,

- filling time approx. 20 minutes,

2.Peer-assessment questionnaire - deadline: 20th January 2022

- to be completed by two colleagues in the frame of a mutual interview

- filling time approx. 60 minutes (professional discussion + completion),

3. Student feedback questionnaire - deadline: last lesson in first semester

- students complete preferably during the last lesson,

- filling time approx. 20 minutes

Thematic areas

TA1 – Curriculum/Course Design and Development  (9 Q, Student 5 Q)

TA2 – Teaching Performance and the Student’s Learning Support (12 Q, Student 8 Q)

TA3 – Assessing the Student's Learning (8 Q, Student 5 Q)
TA4 – Professional Development for the Quality of Teaching (10 Q)

TA5 – Teaching-related Research, Innovation and Social Responsibility (13 Q, St 6 Q)

TA6 – Organizational and Administrative Tasks (just Self 11 Q, Student 3 Q)

 

3 horizontal dimensions: 

Digitalisation

Internationalisation

Inclusion and diversity