Twinning project carried out another mission within the Activity 3.6 Conduct training for external reviewers, establish a pool of trained reviewers from 9 to 13 September 2019.  

The mission was implemented by Ms. Rasa Penkauskiene, Head of Institutional Review Division at the Centre for Quality Assessment in Higher Education (SKVC) of Lithuania and Ms. Jolanta Silka, Director of the Quality Agency for Higher Education of Latvia (AIKA).

The purpose of the mission was to deliver trainings for external experts and to develop a pool of trained reviewers for the Accreditation Department. The trained academic staff will also be involved in mock programme accreditations to be staged by the Twinning project in pilot universities.

The three day-trainings brought together members of academic staff representing various fields of study from both pilot and non-pilot higher education institutions of the project and also independent higher education experts selected by the Twinning office and the Accreditation Department of the Ministry of Education.

The Twinning project experts who acted as trainers informed the training participants about the aims and objectives of the study programme accreditation and introduced them to the Methodology of Programme Accreditation developed jointly by the Twinning experts and Accreditation Department staff.

The participants were also trained on tasks and ethics of the external evaluator, how to work with self-evaluation reports, interviewing techniques, on how to write an evaluation report, how to provide good recommendations to universities for further improvement and many other important aspects of being a reviewer.

The practical part of the trainings focused on simulations of a work on self-evaluation reports, interviews and also writing good recommendations for the universities.

The second stage of trainings are planned to be held later this month.