Data driven decision making for internationalization of higher education: Bridging the gap between faculty and admin using effective communication platforms Erasmus Project

Project Title

Data driven decision making for internationalization of higher education: Bridging the gap between faculty and admin using effective communication platforms

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 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Recognition, transparency, certification; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

The project’s acronym is HEIDA (for Higher Education, Internationalization, Data) and responds to two specific needs: a data collection and sharing tool for the internationalisation activities of higher education institutions (HEIs) and, the need to bridge the gap in communication between HEI faculty, staff and senior management in their internationalisation efforts and activities.

Existing internationalisation indicators and tools do not reflect its diversity adequately and tend to focus on a single dimension of internationalisation performance such as mobility or research impact. This limited set of data and indicators are what are most commonly found in HEIs annual reports, brochures, websites and other reporting or accreditation documents. Some institutions, due to their size, funding or other characteristics are not always able to dedicate the time and other resources to develop business intelligence or data analysis tools internally to have a single source of information about the state of internationalization at their institution. Likewise, internal awareness of what constitutes internationalization and the information or data behind it is generally considered low at most institutions.

To address these concerns, a Strategic Partnership was formed including partners from three European countries (Turkey, Slovenia, Spain) with complementary competencies, skills and experience. They are all Higher Education Institutions that are active in their respective internationalization processes.

The project’s general objectives were achieved specifically as follows:

1. Identifying the internationalization concepts, approaches, indicators and data that are most relevant to HEIs in the participating project countries and the type of information that would be most useful to institutions through a literature review and testing of a draft online tool using an online questionnaire.
2. Identifying adequate internationalization data management practices that can be useful for other HEIs
2. Developing and implementing a test online tool and training course that allows a single source of information about the state of internationalization at a HEI and online training course
3. Disseminating the results Europe-wide to HEIs through the project website, social media accounts and groups, sessions at international education and higher education conferences and other partner communication channels and a launch conference to maximize the impact and sustainability of the HEIDA tool and online training course.

The project started in December 2014 and ended in November 2016.

In the first phase, a desk-based literature review was conducted to provide a clear conceptual and methodological framework that guided the design and implementation of the internationalization data sharing tool and training component. The review was complemented by the findings and reflections of a stakeholder workshop held in Istanbul with representatives of Turkish higher education institutions. This review looked at the concepts of internationalization in higher education at the institutional scale, dimensions and levels. It also looked at why it is important to measure and monitor internationalization in HEIs and provided a map of the most comprehensive indicator tools and/or approaches developed to date by different organizations.

In the second phase, the feasibility of the tool was tested on a sample of 117 HEIs in Europe through an online questionnaire, with most respondents belonging to institutions in Turkey and Slovenia. The aim was to evaluate if the order of steps, number of questions, data management criteria questions and internationalization indicators would be considered easy to understand and useful to its users. The online questionnaire was also meant to gather feedback from future users about whether they considered such a tool a way to add value to their internationalization activities and strategic decision makings. A series of one-to-one interviews, focus groups, surveys and desk research was also conducted at the three partner HEIs to understand how data is managed and used and how does this apply to the online tool and training module as well as best practices.

The third and final phase consisted of activities to promote awareness of the HEIDA online tool and the HEIDA online training module amongst HEIs and other stakeholders and improve a final version of both outputs. The HEIDA tool was presented to an international audience at the HEIDA Conference in Istanbul and other international conferences.

Impact: feedback received from participants through a post-conference questionnaire was mostly positive in terms of the perceived relevance and usefulness of the online tool and their indication that they will incorporate the HEIDA tool and online training to their institution’s activities in the future once ready. All the project reports and outputs are available on the project website (https://heida.ku.edu.tr).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 134655,4 Eur

Project Coordinator

KOC UNIVERSITY & Country: TR

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA
• MEDNARODNA FAKULTETA ZA DRUZBENE IN POSLOVNE STUDIJE ZAVOD