The seventh mock evaluation of selected study programmes under the Activity 3.7 Undertake a mock accreditation at each pilot university for a study program in a priority area of the Twinning project was implemented during the mission that lasted from 3 to 18 January 2020.      

The mission was implemented by Ms. Michelle Houppe, Evaluation expert at the Evaluation Agency for Research and Higher Education of France (Hceres) and Mr. Eckhart Hotzel, Retired Director of the Institute of Interpreting and International Relations at the Strasbourg University of France.

The purpose of the mission was to perform a mock evaluation of Foreign Language Teacher study programme in four pilot universities of the Twinning project – Azerbaijan University of Languages (AUL), Azerbaijan State Pedagogical University (ASPU), Sumgait State Pedagogical University (SSU) and Khazar University.

The mock evaluation of the programme was implemented by a panel of experts composed of two field experts (one local and one European expert), two Quality Assurance experts (one local and one European expert), a student and an employer.   

On the first day of the mission week the experts gathered in Agency for Quality Assurance in Education of the Ministry of Education to discuss the self-evaluation reports of Foreign Language Teacher study programmes submitted by pilot universities. They worked out and drafted questions to be addressed to the university staff during the site visits.  

Later, the experts panel made a one-day site visit to each of those four universities. Interviews were held with the senior management, the academic staff member who developed the self-evaluation report, students, alumni as well as representatives of employers. The experts’ panel also toured various auditoriums, library, labs and other related facilities of the university in order to evaluate the infrastructure used for delivering the study programme.

This was the last mock evaluation of the pilot study programmes implemented jointly by the Twinning project and the Agency for Quality Assurance in Education of the Ministry of Education. In total, mock evaluation of seven study programmes in seven different universities have been performed. As a result of this process, the Twinning project experts will develop a final evaluation report on each of the study programmes evaluated. In their reports the expert will indicate the weaknesses and strengths identified in the delivery of the above-mentioned study programmes and provide recommendations to each university on how to improve those weaknesses.