Mastermind Europe – Master’s admission for a diverse international classroom Erasmus Project

Project Title

Mastermind Europe – Master’s admission for a diverse international classroom

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: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Recognition, transparency, certification

Project Summary

Context/ background
Master’s education in Europe faces huge and varied diversity: of functions of programmes, labour market expectations, multidisciplinarity, international student mobility, etc. This is the background for the Mastermind Europe project as is shown in the rest of this summary, the overall report and the main project Outputs (in annex).

Objective
Mastermind Europe aimed to support Master’s programmes to adapt their admission for a more diverse and international pool of applicants by developing and testing a toolkit and Pool of experts.
The Guiding Tools on Coherent admission, Subject knowledge, Academic Competence, Personal competence, Language proficiency and the Admission process. are on the website www.mastermindeurope.eu, developed and improved through 8 Focus Group meetings and 12 pilots Three survey-base reports underpin the evidence-base for the Mastermind Europe approach.
Mastermind Europe provides a tool for voluntary use, to be fit to individual sizes. The proof of its value is in the eating and will show over time.
But all responses so far have been positive: on the merit, the usefulness and the intention to actually use it.

Consortium
The consortium of 6 universities, 3 associations in Higher Education and 2 private companies in Higher Education in 8 countries has worked well. Cooperation and communication has been excellent, with strong mutual respect – between partners with often very little previous work together. Each partner fulfilled important roles and made essential contributions to the outputs and the process. The special committees for Finance and Communication worked well; the Flexible Project Fund played a crucial role.

Activities
To produce the Guiding Tools and Expert pool and test them – and further develop them – we used the Transnational Project meetings as well as other meetings and digital communication. The website and final conference played key roles in dissemination – as did the 19 external events, the Newsletter with 176 subscribers and the Repository of documents. The Evidence reports helped strengthen the evidence base for a competency-assessment approach to Master’s admission

Results / Impact
The intended impact has been at the level of the European Higher Education Area rather than a narrow focus on the Consortium partners; the Consortium composition reflects this 6 universities, with 2 associations of universities (German and Catalan), one overarching European association (ACA), and two private companies.
The impact within the Consortium was significant overall: five of the six universities actually conducted a pilot to apply the Toolbox and Expert pool at the level of individual Master’s programmes and invited the Mastermind Expert team to guide that process.
Outside the consortium, we reached well over a thousand academic Master’s coordinators, policy makers, vice-deans education, ministry officials, etc. Of the 226 participants in either a Focus Group meeting and/or the Final Conference 65 participants gave unsolicited positive feedback and 68 responded favourably to the end-of-project survey.
We had specific policy impact at HE system level in the Netherlands and Catalunya, where educational authorities and overarching universities’ associations underlined the value of our approach and results.

Long term benefits
The Mastermind Toolkit and Expert pool will continue to help key players in the HE systems (academic Master’s coordinators, policy makers and decision makers at Faculty, University, national, and European levels) to cope with the increasing diversity in Master’s programmes. It will remain available – with expert support where asked – to help diversify the pool of successful applicants as well as raise expertise and ability to articulate ‘learning incomes’ in terms of subject-related knowledge & skills, general academic competencies, personal competencies & traits, as well as linguistic skills.
Arguably, the Mastermind Europe project has contributed significantly to the development of the conceptual framework – the language so to speak – with which to discuss and develop a vision on Master’s admission and Master’s education that, on the one hand, is better adapted to the diversity and, on the other, gives more prominence to the general academic and personal competencies – or transversal skills that the modern labour market requires.

Monitoring and quality assurance
The Quality Council served well as both sounding board and critical reflection platform for the project. We have invited the members of the QC to remain in this role in the post-project continuation and we expect that most members will follow the three who have immediately pledged their continued engagement.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 316702,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

STICHTING VU & Country: NL

Project Partners

• VILNIAUS UNIVERSITETAS
• UNIVERZA V LJUBLJANI
• HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
• StudyPortals B.V.
• UNIVERSITAET GRAZ
• Ziggurat bv
• STIFTUNG ZUR FORDERUNG DER HOCHSCHULREKTORENKONFERENZ