From the 14 April of this year Kutaisi University of Law and Economics has began collaboration with Mechelen University college in the framework of a Tempus IV-project.
Project: Innovative Curriculum Reform as System Enhancement - InCReaSE
Wider objective:
To enhance the capacity of universities to support and implement innovation in curriculum development and sustain continuous curriculum modernisation with focus on defining the objectives in learning outcomes, implementing the ECTS, using evaluation and validation by students and labour market.
Specific objectives:
- training of management staff to initiate and support curriculum development processes
- training of teaching staff to implement curriculum innovation
- implementation of curriculum development in a pilot phase
- dissemination of developed expertise
Project strategy:
- creation of an international pool of experts
- development of management training programme by the experts ( with the help of experts from outside the consortium)
- development of teaching staff training programme by the experts( with the help of experts from outside the consortium)
- centralized training (we take turns in each university) of educational managers of the partner institutions( with the help of external experts from Louvain university)
- decentralized (in each university separately) training of teaching staff of one study programme of the partner institutions
- elaboration of training modules for dissemination purposes by the experts, based upon evaluation of the trainings
- dissemination via a conference and the organization of training modules within the networks of the partner institutions
Project content:
Curriculum development is defined as the innovation of the curriculum within the Bologna framework.
More specific the work of each university will follow three phases:
Phase 1: defining learning outcomes of the programme in terms of competencies based on a desk analysis in relevant social groups (alumni and professional groups)
Phase 2: defining the courses of the curriculum, the didactical concept and the allocation of credits (i.e.ECTS).
Phase 3: Validation of the learning outcomes by students, alumni, teaching staff and employers (e.g. installation of an advisory board):
Project outcomes:
- a pool of international experts
- methodology for management of curriculum development
- methodology for implementation of curriculum development
- training modules to train educational managers on curriculum development
- training modules to train teaching staff on curriculum development
- tools for desk analysis
- tools for evaluation and validation of the curriculum for the labour market
- tools for evaluation and validation of the curriculum for students
- an innovated curriculum at each of the partner institutions
- project website for information for the project partners and for dissemination for other audiences.
Project activities
- innovating the curriculum in one study field in each university
- coordination meetings of the participating institutions
- centralized training sessions of the universities management staff by experts and external experts
- decentralized training sessions of the teaching staff by the experts
- development of on-line experts support for universities
- expert meetings with external experts
- guidelines editing
- expert meetings to elaborate the dissemination activities
- dissemination conferences
- development of a project website
The group involved in the project consists of the following participants:
• Riga consulting Center “InVITe Konsultacijas”
• Immanuel Kant State University of Russia
• Khmelnitskiy National University
• Ryazan State University
• SEK University of Segovia
• Tajik State Pedagogical University
• Vladivostok State University of Economics and Service (VSUES)
• The New Eurasia Foundation (Moscow)
• Kutaisi University of Law and Economics
• Mechelen University Collage as a aplicant
The project budjet is 1294166€. The duration of project is 3 years. Application dedline was 5 May of 2008. If the project will be appreciate positively, it will start on September-October 2008.
