THEQC organizes “2018 Institutional External Evaluator Training” with the attendance of 464 evaluator candidates chosen from HEIs

On 12-13 September 2018, the THEQC organized “2018 Institutional Evaluator Training” with the attendance of 464 academics included in the pool of evaluator candidates by the Council. Hosting the prospective evaluators, the all-day program opened with the keynote speech of THEQC President Prof. Dr. Muzaffer Elmas.

During his speech, Prof. Dr. Elmas remarked: “The Institutional Evaluation Program is a critical process in order to preserve the institutional autonomy of higher education institutions, stimulate the notion of quality assurance in administrative systems and enable competitive advantage in higher education. Thanks to this process, higher education institutions will be able to report their strengths, weaknesses and success stories in line with our country’s objectives, the Council of Higher Education’s (CoHE) strategies and the latest developments across the world while they could utilize the process as a medium of continuous improvement.”

 “We have organized our 3^rd training in the 3^rd year of Institutional Evaluation Program” 

Prof. Dr. Elmas went on to emphasize the importance of the evaluator training in terms of ensuring the competence of the evaluators:

“Evaluator training is significant to ensure the competence of the evaluators. Therefore, we attach utmost importance to the subject. We have so far evaluated the opinions of our attenders at the end of our annual trainings, and observed that they above all expect us to update the methodology of our training program. Other leading feedback of the evaluators included:

• Extending our training program over a longer period of time.
• Performing group studies with fewer number of attenders.
• Employing interactive and active learning methodologies.
• Organizing workshops that focus on case studies.

By taking all the feedback into account, we have restructured the training program this year. Unlike previous years, we have changed the functioning of the process and started using “Flipped Classroom” model. Basing on this model, we have:

• Presented the contents, presentations and questions we shared in the face-to-face trainings on an online platform,
• Featured video and sound recordings, screen images and presentation documents.
• The online platform will be open to access after the trainings, which will perpetuate the training process, expedite reaching larger masses, and contribute to the dissemination of quality culture.
• Our primary concern here is to enhance the quality and productivity of the face-to-face trainings.

We have organized group studies and planned our works through case studies for the effective use of the time period allowed for the face-to-face trainings. Within one and a half months, we uploaded the training materials penned by the Institutional Evaluation Commission to our e-learning platform. For their contributions to the process, I would like to express my thanks to:

• Hacettepe University Distant Education Application and Research Center members Prof. Dr. Arif Altun, Asst. Prof. Fatma Bayrak and Specialist Perihan Tekeli,
• THEQC Academic Advisor Prof. Dr. Buket Akkoyunlu from Çankaya University,
• Asst. Abdullah Yasin Gündüz from Hacettepe University Faculty of Education,
• Instructors Faruk Altuntaş and Alper Avdan, our colleagues in THEQC Information Technologies Desk,
• THEQC Vice President Prof. Dr. Tuncay Döğeroğlu, THEQC members Prof. Dr. Tuğba Yanpar Yelken, Prof. Dr. Aslıhan Nasır, Prof. Dr. Sibel Aksu Yıldırım, Prof. Dr. Sina Ercan, Council Advisors Asst. Prof. Dr. Dilek Avşaroğlu Erkan, Asst. Prof. Dr. Tuba Canvar Kahveci and Specialist Ayhan Koçer, who moderated and worked for the contents of our training program.

Our next target is to upload the seminars on online platforms so as to have continuous contact with our quality coordinators and evaluator candidates and exchange information with them. In other words, we aim to maintain our contact in a more efficient way by eliminating the temporal and spatial limitations thanks to the Webinar platform.”

Prof. Dr. Elmas finished his speech by reiterating that the dissemination of the quality culture notion is among the primary objectives of THEQC.