The EHEA Twinning project has already left almost 19 out of 24 months of implementation behind and now it is moving towards pilot evaluations which can be considered the pinnacle of the project.
The pilot evaluations will be carried out based on pilot Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in Higher Education which were drafted based on European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in Higher Education by a group composed of Twinning experts from Finland and Estonia as well as local higher education experts May last year.
AzSG will first be tested in three universities which have been selected as pilots - Azerbaijan State Economics University (3-7 April 2017), Azerbaijan State Pedagogical University (10-14 April 2017) and Azerbaijan Technical University (24-28 April).
All three pilot universities have already submitted their self-evaluation reports which the evaluation team (panel) members will read before the site visit so that they can accordingly formulate questions to be put to the university staff.
Each evaluation team consists of three Finnish and Estonian evaluators, two trained local experts as well as one student.
The evaluations will have a format of interviews with the university staff which includes management, deans, teaching staff, students, support staff and external stakeholders of the university.
Management, strategic planning, human resources, research activities are the areas which are going to be evaluated during the pilot evaluations.
The evaluation team managers have already started preparing for the evaluations and keep in a close contact with both foreign and local members of the group.
The evaluation team will later come up with a report on outcomes of the site-visit.
The EHEA Twinning project plans to organize a large seminar in early summer in an effort to announce results of the pilot evaluations to a wider public.
