Across higher education, educational developers and their supporting campus communities are being called upon to scale up evidence-informed practices, to enhance student experiences, and to document the changes. This article builds on the work of scholars who have taken up this evaluative challenge, by examining varied aspects of the evidencing…

This Education Policy Perspective serves as Part A in a two-part series of policy papers on "Promoting Quality and Excellence in Higher Education and VET". This first paper (Part A) reviews recent policy developments in the external evaluation and quality assurance of higher education and vocational education and training (VET)…

Purpose: Higher education institutions are required to evaluate program quality through cyclical program review processes. Despite often being considered the "gold standard" of academic review, there persists dissatisfaction with the lack of integration of program review findings into other planning processes, such as budgeting,…

Increasing instructional quality in higher education is a key goal of educational development (ED) work, yet demonstrating complex outcomes remains challenging and lacks practical guidance. Evaluating ED services often relies on a reductionist approach characterized by linear assumptions of causal pathways to measure the extent to which…

Accreditation as a form of quality assurance has spread worldwide. As a result, the public and research interests have targeted the policies that developed agencies and procedures and the responses and effects of accreditation on higher education organizations and programs. However, studies on accreditation have not analyzed two core aspects: the…

Almost twenty years after the Bologna Declaration was signed, the extent to which universities are embracing competence-based learning is a topic of much interest. This article presents a comprehensive model for the analysis of the implementation of competence-based learning (CBL) in Higher Education. An extensive bibliographic review was carried…

This paper provides a program evaluation model, along with field-testing results, that was developed in response to the need for an evaluation model able to support systematic evaluation of teaching and learning centers (CTLs). The model builds upon the author's previous studies investigating the evaluation practices and struggles experienced at…

This article describes the development of an evaluation and impact framework to assess the effectiveness of educational innovations. It can be utilized within a single program, as well as at institutional and national levels. While it is contextualized in a Chilean university, it is argued that it is widely applicable as it is informed by…

The current focus on identifying criteria for academic teaching practice is influencing performance goals for teaching academics. This has produced a strong imperative to engage with the scholarship of teaching and learning; however, it is not always clear how teaching academics continue to build capacity to do this during their academic career.…

Many African countries have developed policies to reform their education system in order to widen participation in higher education. To achieve this, open, online and distance education based models have been advocated as the most viable delivery tools in expanding access to higher education. However, the policy analysis of Kenya, Rwanda and…

This paper presents a quasi-experimental evaluation of a required, teaching-focused, new faculty program at a large research university. The study makes use of institutional data, including student evaluations of teaching and faculty participation in educational development activities, which are available on many campuses yet rarely used in…

In the education system of Serbia significant results have been achieved in the last ten years regarding the establishment and development of the evaluation system in education and the practical application of various types and procedures of evaluation. This paper gives a short overview of ways in which evaluation is carried out on elementary,…

The HEI-ICI project involves cooperation between the University of Eastern Finland (UEF) and three African partners. The main aim of the project, now in its fourth year, has been to develop education in health sciences and to improve the quality of teaching. The target has been to develop the skills of selected junior faculty from the Public…

The development of critical thinking skills among learners is a common educational goal across graduate theological schools. The purpose of this article is to provide a survey of some of the primary historical influences of the critical thinking movement in higher education in the United States and the movement's impact on graduate…

This study presents an evaluation of the centres of excellence in higher education in Finland. This approach is an example of enhancement-led evaluation aiming to improve the long-term development of education. The study presents the Degree Programme in Civil Engineering of the Turku University of Applied Sciences, which was awarded the…