European Network On Teaching Excellence Erasmus Project

Project Title

European Network On Teaching Excellence

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Quality Assurance; Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development); New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Despite the the Bologna process and the ambitious proposal of the creation of a European Education Area with the aim of strengthening teaching and mobility efforts, approaches to training and reward schemes of professors, higher education teachers and doctoral supervisors are still mostly confined to single institutions or national policies and lack international transparency and comparability. Whilst national approaches have made significant progress, higher education training remains fragmented and the recognition of higher education teaching qualifications schemes for universities lack consistency at the European level. What is needed in the long-term is a truly European approach to promoting and rewarding minimum standards of teaching excellence.

Therefore, the overarching objective of the European Network on Teaching Excellence (E-note) is to contribute to more transparency, coherence and convergence in the field of the training, promotion and reward of higher education teaching skills by developing a blueprint for a common higher education teaching qualification scheme, including a comprehensive mapping exercise, best practice guide, elements of a common training curriculum and a self-assessment tool as well as evaluation guidelines. Such a common teaching qualification scheme blueprint will contribute to the possibility of setting up a shared broad curriculum of training high education teachers in the field of BA and MA teaching excellence and of best practices in the field of doctoral supervision. As such, the blueprint can on the one hand help institutions without formal teaching qualification and training schemes to create them according to the best practice handbook and blueprint developed by E-note, and on the other hand, it can contribute in the medium-term to the mutual recognition of training and qualification schemes. Overall, such a blueprint will also contribute to the internationalisation of higher education staff skills and career development in a European context. The project – carried out by a consortium of 4 universities in 4 countries (Leiden, Copenhagen, Coimbra and Charles University) a European think tank and the Coimbra Group (a network of 40 universities across Europe) is in itself a transnational endeavour since it requires the facilitation of a common ground between national approaches and to facilitate an innovative transnational European approach. Participants will be recruited from the partner institutions for the training activities and external stakeholders will be invited for the multiplier events. Participants will
be early career academics as well as senior professors as well as academic senior managers dealing with teaching excellence, administrative staff dealing with teacher training and recognition of teaching qualifications as well as policy officials in the national ministries and relevant EU institutions and international organisations.

The project is based on a methodology that combines collaborative approaches and is suited to the different objectives, outputs and activities, including desk research and stakeholder interviews for mapping and best practice identification, surveys for the evaluation of training and common curriculum design and qualitative research methods for the compiling of best practice handbooks and the blueprint.

The envisaged results are a combination of 7 Intellectual Outputs: a comprehensive mapping exercise, the development of a common curriculum, the development of best practice guidelines on the evaluation, reward and promotion of teaching excellence and the implementation and evaluation of a pilot common teaching qualification scheme and training course for higher education teaching and measures for rewarding and promoting teaching excellence in the four participating universities (implemented via four teaching and learning activities). In addition, two outputs tie together the joined lessons learned from the previous four outputs in the form of a blueprint for a common European framework of higher education teaching excellence, including the development of an online self-assessment tool for universities and a best practice and lessons learned handbook tying together all results of the project outputs and results.

This best practice handbook will be made freely available on an online platform and -together with the blueprint- will be disseminated widely by the universities, think tank and Coimbra Group members to core target group member. The aim is to stimulate with this and the project results a reflection and action towards a truly European teaching qualification and reward scheme. The long-term benefits could be follow-up activities by the consortium team and their partners towards a common European Curriculum and even Certificate on European Teaching Excellence.

Project Website

http://www.teachingexcellence.eu

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 386425 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN & Country: NL

Project Partners

• COIMBRA GROUP ASBL
• UNIVERSIDADE DE COIMBRA
• KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
• GLOBAL GOVERNANCE INSTITUTE ASBL
• UNIVERZITA KARLOVA