Key-competences in higher education as a tool for democracy

As the focus of teaching progressively moves from being transmissive to student-centred, under the beneficial pressure of the European recommendations, the debate on how to form and measure competences in students has become topical. This transformation was made necessary to nudge education institutions towards accountability, and to allow students (and their families) to make informed school choices. Large-scale achievement or cognitive tests were then developed by international organizations and administered in schools. The focus of the present paper is to provide empirical evidence that this process can be successfully embraced also by the higher education system. To this end we report data from several surveys in which ANVUR, the Italian public agency for the evaluation of universities and research institutes, administered the Test of Competence (TECO) to evaluate generic and disciplinary competences in first- and third-year undergraduate students. Using the value-added approach, we demonstrate that both types of competences can be formed by higher education institutions and that the university attendance makes a difference, especially for the disciplinary ones. The study qualifies TECO as a reliable tool for self-assessment of teaching effectiveness, to be used for evidence-based policies in higher education

La valutazione dei prodotti della ricerca ed il suo impatto sul sistema universitario e degli enti di ricerca: il caso italiano

La prima valutazione dell’attività di ricerca italiana è stata fatta dal Comitato d’Indirizzo per la Valutazione della Ricerca (CIVR), un organismo di nomina governativa, che avviò per il sistema delle università e degli enti di ricerca, un processo finalizzato alla qualificazione dell’attività di ricerca del nostro Paese. In quell’esercizio furono analizzati poco più di 17.000 prodotti, scelti dalle varie strutture, per il triennio 2001-2003 ed i risultati furono pubblicati nel gennaio del 2..

Verso l’accreditamento dell’offerta formativa

Università obiettivo valutazione, numero speciale, Le Monnier Volume 1: Analisi Volume 2: Document