VISIT TO JUAA - A NEW PERSPECTIVE OF EVALUATION

2018-06-26

In order to promote substantial cooperation among international evaluation associations, Taiwan Assessment and Evaluation Association (TWAEA) started to plan the visits to Japan University Accreditation Association (JUAA), and the Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment (ONESQA) in 2017 and commence the discussion about the content of the activities. Later in 2018, a series of activities were begun for exchange and interaction.

After the first cross-region workshop was held in Taiwan in Mar., the second one was held in Japan by JUAA from the 14th to 15th of Jun. for the topics "Reviewer Training" and "Enhancement of Evaluation Efficiency” to improve the evaluation quality. Participants literally studied the contents of the course for reviewer training from various institutions, and an agreement was made that the reviewer training is an important part in evaluation mechanism. The quality of the reviewers is extremely critical for evaluation. Insufficient knowledge of evaluation ethics, unfamiliar with evaluation procedures, inaccurate data interpretation, or unsatisfactory report writing will cause negative impacts on the evaluation, even if the experts and scholars are professional in specialized fields. Without training at all levels of trainings, they are not qualified for the role of being evaluation reviewers.

Two well-known and distinguished private universities, Rikkyo University and Kogakuin University, were arranged for visiting this time; both institutions choose "Institutional Characteristics" to be their standards for internal evaluation to develop relevant internal quality assurance mechanisms. As the higher education evaluation system in Japan is undergoing a transformation to make future evaluation to be led by the institution actively, the institutions should start to review their own needs and base on them to develop their own self-evaluation mechanism for sustainable improvement. More international opportunities shall be explored and integrated with the world's trend.

In the past, institutions concerned more about how to pass the evaluation threshold; however, in the future, it will be transformed into not only achieve the goals (quality assurance) set by the evaluation, but also how to improve the evaluation quality. During this activity, participants not only knew well about their own evaluation practices, but also got to know more international evaluation trends for evaluation experiences for them to bring back. In the future, more activities like this will be arranged for institutions to develop positive sense of evaluation and make them better. It is hoped that in addition to promote the evaluation system to be in line with international standards, it will also improve the evaluation quality and effectiveness through the holding of this activity.

TWAEA has worked hard to promote the professional knowledge and skill related to accreditation and also the provision of accreditation services. To enhance the quality in higher education is always the mission of TWAEA. In recent years, TWAEA not only has started to join the members of the international accreditation organizations, but also worked closely with professional associations in Japan, Thailand, Europe, Russia, New Zealand, Croatia, Hong Kong and Macau for further cooperation.