QUALITY ASSURANCE AND EVALUATION IN ERASMUS+ PROJECTS, A CASE STUDY

In 2016 we looked at the effect of internal evaluation of educational EU projects as a way to improve the quality of the project, regarding both the process and the outcomes. We compared the three projects; iQTool – a project producing tools to secure quality in e-learning, Understand IT – a project in the area of digital competence of VET teachers and dCCDFLITE – a project making a MOOC for a World Wide audience in entrepreneurship training.

In this follow up, work in progress paper, we have developed a methodology to study the effect of evaluation in an ongoing Strategic Partnership Erasmus+ project, called 9-Conversations. In 9-Conversations the main focus is to develop an app to help refugees adapt their entrepreneurial skills to their new countries. The paper builds on evaluation theory and on the Concurrent Design approach used to implement the 9-Conversations project. There are big differences between Erasmus+ projects and earlier educational EU projects, not only in terminology, but also in reality. In Erasmus+ there is a focus on Intellectual Outputs, i.e. outcomes, instead of the traditional Work Packages. Evaluation and quality assurance is consequently a hidden activity as part of project management. The question we ask is – how will the new terminology and organisation in the Erasmus+ project compared with former Socrates projects affect the quality of the project.

This paper starts with an introduction chapter where we present our background for internal evaluation of EU projects. Next, we give a short presentation of the purpose and the aim of the 9-Conversations project, which is used as a case in this study. Then, we discuss our approach regarding the execution of such evaluations. Finally, we present the most important contribution of this study, i.e. a methodical approach for evaluation of projects such as 9-Conversations.

In the next study, we plan to interview one or more Erasmus+ evaluators, National Agency Advisors and project coordinators. As part of 9-Conversations and our use of Concurrent Design in this project, we will further develop the evaluation and quality assurance processes. Combining external interviews with empirical data from our study, we hope to be able to give some advice on internal evaluations of Erasmus+ projects and more generally to shed light on Erasmus+ projects in general.