Organisational Maturity Assessment Tool for the Europeanisation of Educational Institutions Erasmus Project

Project Title

Organisational Maturity Assessment Tool for the Europeanisation of Educational Institutions

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 addressing more than one field

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy; Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development)

Project Summary

In the Vocational Education and Training and Adult education sectors, initiatives supporting the Europeanisation and internationalisation of the stakeholders remain rare. In 2009, the European Commission envisioned education and training systems and institutions to become “more European and international” (COM(2009) 329 final). The Erasmus+ programme 2014-2020 sustains this vision through the support to projects whose goals are to “increase the capacity and professionalism of education and training institutions to work at EU/international level, and to improve the management competences and internationalisation strategies”.
In this context, the project “Europeanisation” has been initiated to create an online self-assessment tool that helps education and training organisations “find out how well prepared they are for working internationally”.
This tool is freely available here: www.europeanisation.eu.
This tool has for objective to help educational organisations identify and remove the obstacles preventing their institutions from successful work at the EU/international level. We indeed observed in the past that educational organisations were often unable to gauge their fitness or “institutional readiness” to work at this level. In the absence of evaluation tools, many organisations overestimated and some underestimated their organisational capacities.
The tool is therefore an eye-opener. Managers and other teaching and non-teaching staff members can freely and confidentially assess their organisation with regards to 7 capacity areas: (1) Mission, Vision, Culture, (2) Strategy and Management, (3) Human Resources, (4) Project Management, (5) Financial Capacity, (6) External Communication, (7) European Dimension. In these 7 capacity areas, the user navigates through 42 issues within which s/he discovers 4 situation descriptions per issue and is invited to select the description which reflects the best his/her organisation. Depending on the answers, the user finally gets an assessment report describing the readiness of the organisation to work at the EU/international level. The assessment report includes concrete recommendations of actions in the short- and long-term. Some “success stories” of internationalised organisations and tips from practitioners complete the tool.
In the academic and practitioner fields, this kind of tool is usually called “Organisational Capacity Assessment Tool” (OCAT). This tool is the first European OCAT specifically targeting education institutions with the goal to assess their international capacity.
The approach of the tool is not to create a hierarchy between organisations. Users do not have to reach the top level to be successful at the EU/international level. The approach is to encourage an internal improvement process for all users, precisely in the organisational capacities considered more decisive in their internationalisation process. Consequently, the tool not only is a diagnosis tool but also a learning tool. It has for overall objective to contribute to the organisational development of the education institutions using it.
The tool has been elaborated for the VET and Adult education sectors. But the other education sectors can benefit from it. The tool is equally valid to organisations having no international experience and to the ones already implementing European/international activities. It can for example help applicants for Erasmus+ KA1 mobility projects in their preparation of “Internationalisation Strategies” as well as KA2 applicants in preparation of their Strategic Partnerships. But the tool is also perfectly applicable outside the context of Erasmus+ as a tutor for Europeanisation/Internationalisation.
The tool is totally free of charge, compatible with any device including smartphones and tablets, and available in English, Bulgarian, Croatian, German, Greek and Hungarian.
The first users of the tool have reported that the tool is “forward-looking” and “inspiring”. The impact created is that the tool “makes you think of topics you take for granted”, is “a productive way to think about their institutions” and is “useful to improve European strategies”. The expected long-term benefit for these organisations is to make their Europeanisation/internationalisation strategies more efficient and more durable, and consequently raise their overall performance.
The tool has been developed by a European partnership of 7 organisations of various educational sectors and with expertise in Europeanisation strategies or organisational development: emcra GmbH (Germany, Lead Partner), the EU-Fundraising Association (Germany), the European Center for Quality (Bulgaria), the Institute for Postgraduate Studies at the University for National and World Economy (Bulgaria), the Cyprus Project Management Society (Cyprus), the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Csongrád County (Hungary) and the German Association-Organisation of the Danube Swabians (Croatia).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 268907,69 Eur

Project Coordinator

emcra GmbH & Country: DE

Project Partners

• Humán Eröforrásért Egyesület Dél-Alföldi Régió
• INSTITUTE FOR POSTGRADUATE STUDIES
• EU-Fundraising Association e.V.
• EUROPEAN CENTER FOR QUALITY OOD
• Cyprus Project Management Society
• Njemacka zajednica – Zemaljska udruga Podunavskih Svaba u Hrvatskoj
• CSONGRAD COUNTY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY