Abstract:

Academic tutor is not a recognized and regulated profession across Europe. Like many others professions, no formal training and diploma recognize teachers’ competences to support their students during their internship in companies.

The European Leonardo da Vinci project CERTITUDE aims to develop a European academic tutor certification scheme that is ISO 17024:2012 compliant. The certification will contribute to the tutors’ validation of non-formal and informal learning. It will also contribute to the transparency, the recognition and the evaluation of tutors’ competences and qualifications. In this paper, we will explain how the project partners are developing the certification scheme respecting a process that ensures its quality. We will also explain how we ensure the quality of the process itself.

The development of this certification scheme is following a standardization and evaluation process that ensures its quality and its recognition by interested stakeholders. It is based on the process used within ISO (International Standardization Organization) to draft and publish a standard that take into account stakeholders’ comments to reach a consensus.

The certification scheme manual proposes an assessment process based on an academic tutor competence specification. The manual is drafted with the involvement of an experts committee composed of twenty-two European stakeholders representing tutors, public and private training organizations, certifications bodies, research centers, financing bodies and public authorities. The experts’ committee is open to interested parties who have an interest to recognize and to valorize academic tutors’ competences.

The ISO 17024 compliant certification scheme is entering the testing phase in January 2014. Two phases are planned before its commercial exploitation at the end of the project. During the first phase, projects’ partners will test the certification scheme with tutors of seven educational companies. An online assessment tool will be used. Test's results will bring a first list of improvements to the manual and scheme. It will also provide information for the training and the calibration of the future certification bodies’ auditors who will test the certification scheme in a second and last phase. The results of the two test phases will lead to the publication of the academic tutor certification scheme. Once it will be published, certification bodies will be able to use it to certify academic tutors’ competences.

The entire certification scheme development process and test phases are assessed within the project. A risk analysis is managed to ensure the achievement of project's objectives.

Keywords:

Certification, assessment, competence, academic tutor.