EVALUATION IN CAPACITY BUILDING STRATEGY: THE NEXT STEP IN THE LMD PHILOSOPHY

The LMD architecture has acquired different connotations in the mind-set of its users due to a lack of, and sometimes, to the “erroneous” understanding of its functioning. To this, I propose a number of elements to be taken into account in order to come up to this impartiality. “Harmonization” is a recurrent issue in education. Credits and Mechanisms of control need to be readapted to the Algerian context and the difficulty of use of the LMD vocabulary form major hindrances to its workability. Finally, a competency-based logic needs to replace the current theoretical approaches to evaluation that bear upon imparting knowledge to the students rather than developing the ability of understanding. Thus, it is my contention that only when such an understanding is best profitable that a successful implementation is practically reached.

Following the tremendous changes that have sporadically overstepped the Algerian capacity-border in all fields of life, new waves of educational imperatives seemed to be the only source of evolutionary congruity in the socio-economic market. On the other hand, the rapid changes of information and communication technologies coupled with a lack of personal involvement in the learning process created a situation of distress that entailed the Algerian community to follow in the steps of the most economic powers and the developing countries. As a matter of fact, new forms of education have been introduced in the year 2004-2005 in the Algerian Higher Education schema and became known as the LMD system (Licence-Master-Doctorat). The LMD system was a carbon-copy of the European model of education with its principles laying on a European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) where modules are acquired after the accumulation of a certain number of credits. New literature about this form of evaluation became a matter of debate all along the five starting years of implementation. However, new questions pertaining to the feasibility and understandability of this reform are now a new source of debate all over seminars and symposiums among the Algerian community. Are the rules clear? Does evaluation comply with the legal principles of scrutiny? Does it demonstrate the achievement of a number of learning objectives and, finally, does it apply a beneficial role to learning or does it merely reduce it to some questionable aspects? These questions, consequently, are to be debated in the present paper.