Abstract:

Team meetings can play a relevant role in the process, management, coordination and evaluation of a project, this is the case of `An INTegral Teacher Training for Developing Digital and Communicative Competences and Subject Content Learning at Schools (intTT)´, a Socrates-Comenius project which has been financed by the European Commission. Six Universities have worked together in this project: Alcala (Spain, coordinator of the project), Comenius of Bratislava (Slovakia), Helsinki (Finland), Lisbon (Portugal), Leicester (United Kingdom) and Karadeznic Technical University of Trabzon (Turkey).

It seems convenient to state that evaluation has been essential in intTT project dealing with initial teacher training as partners firmly believe that teaching/learning and evaluation are closely interrelated, the latter acting as feedback of the former. Consequently, assessment has two main aims, the first is directly connected with the management, process and achievement of the project, the second deals with the teaching/learning outcomes.

Evaluation has started since the beginning of the project thanks to team meetings which have served to manage and coordinate the project process, and they have also acted as monitoring tools for the outcomes produced during project lifetime.

Team meetings have not been the only method used in project evaluation however the purpose of the poster intends to show how meetings have acted in intTT project evaluation and management. We will start by saying that there have been seven meetings along the project. Meeting agendas have been designed by Alcalá University, and approved by the University organizing the respective meeting, then agendas have been sent to every partner so that they can see the topics that would be dealt with and can prepare further documents to be analysed in the meeting.

Consequently, team meetings have served to review project progress and to plan future tasks. Partners have actively participated in the meetings, and discussions about the different points appearing in the meeting agenda such as project tasks, didactic materials and activities, didactic actions or seminars, project dissemination have been planned and studied leading to agreements which helped in the management, process and evaluation of the project.

Everything treated in team meetings can be seen in the meeting minutes which show the development of the project, they can be useful project reports as they explain how partners have worked, how proposals had been designed before each meeting to be analyzed there, and how agreements have been obtained.

As team meetings have had this important role in the progress of the project, it seemed convenient to evaluate them too. Then, an evaluation questionnaire of each meeting has been filled in by each project member attending the meetings. The questionnaires for meeting evaluation have been designed by the University of Alcalá. A copy of the questionnaire is presented in this poster and the results of this evaluation are also included.

Summarizing, meetings have been effective and fruitful, in partners’ opinion they mean a monitoring and evaluation tool for the project that can assure its quality, and the European Commission has recognized them as a valuable material for the achievement of the project.

Keywords:

Team meetings, project management and coordination, monitoring, evaluation.