Quality Assessment and Peer Review in Practice Erasmus Project

Project Title

Quality Assessment and Peer Review in Practice

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 adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

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

Project Summary

This partnership is titled Quality Assessment and Peer Review in Practice and is comprised of four partners who provide adult education for students in Finland, Spain, Turkey and Greece.
The communication language was English although this was not the language of any of the partners, which implies an additional effort
for all participants involved.
The aims of this project were to develop innovative adult education and management practices, and to encourage widespread
implementation and to improve the quality and amount of co-operation between adult education organisations.

Motivation of this project:
The aim of this project was that all partners learn how to do peer review and how to use it in quality management. Peer review supports continuing quality improvement. To be able to develope the qualitative activities of each other peer review is a form of external evaluation which fosters quality assurance and quality development.
The so called peers, who are an external group of experts, were invited to make a judgment of the quality of different fields of the adult
education institutions located in different countries. In order to be able to evaluate processes in different adult education
institutions, the peers had to visit those organizations and this was done during the mobilities.
Although the peers must be external, they have to work in similar adult education fields and have the knowledge and specific expertise of the evaluated subject. The aim of this project was to evaluate the activities and how each partner organized the mobilities in their country using the same criteria.
Peers are “persons of equal standing” with the persons whose performance is reviewed and so they were also in this project. The Peers gave initial oral feedback at the end of each Peer Visit and a final peer review report was written after every peer review visit. One important point of view of this project was that all partners learned both give and get feed back.

Objectives were and they were reached:
1. To be able to use peer review as a quality management tool.
2. To improve the quality of certain fields of adult education.
3. To have peer review as an evaluation tool in the future.
3. To learn more about external inspection and external assessment in our institutions.
4. To introduce peer review assessment and development procedures in our institutes.
5. To learn how to give and get constructive feed back.
6. To develop innovative adult education and management practices and to encourage its widespread implementation.
7. To support innovative ICT-based educational content, services and practices.
8. To ensure that people on the margins of society have access to adult education, especially those who left education without basic
qualifications.
9. To promote awareness of the importance of cultural and linguistic diversity within Europe. Especially for us who live in
remote areas.
10. To encourage adult students to use a foreign language.
11. To have different cultural approaches and to get to know other partners´ cultures.

Problems we intended to address:
1. Transparency and comparability of quality in adult education in Europe through a common
European standard.
2. Incompetence in ICT-skills of adult students.
3. Incompetence in language skills of adult students.
4. Expanding European culture into remote areas.
5. Equal opportunities in society.
6. Social exclusion of remote areas.

Approaches we took to achieve our objectives:
1. We used peer review techniques to assess every partner´s institution during the mobilities.
2. Peer review assessed both the mobilities and activities and how they were organized.
3. The coordinating institution made all the peer review forms based on the European peer review manual for initial VET.
4. Supporting adult students used and increased their ICT-skills.
5. Adult students were encouraged to use their English.
6. Included the local media in the activities of the participating educational institutions.
7. Increased the knowledge of European culture in remote areas.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 157635 Eur

Project Coordinator

Jokilaaksojen koulutuskuntayhtymä & Country: FI

Project Partners

• IDRIMA NEOLAIAS KAI DIA BIOU MATHISIS
• Karesi Halk Egitimi Merkezi ve Aksam Sanat Okulu
• ESCOLA OFICIAL DE IDIOMAS DE OURENSE