Itinerario Lab_EN

Itinerario Lab Calidad que nos une

Certified teachers

Hours of training

Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean

Universities

Lab Calidad que nos une is a training itinerary aimed at the quality areas of universities in Latin America and the Caribbean. The program has been developed within the framework of the Plan for the Transfer, Exchange and Management of Knowledge for the Development of Spanish Cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean (Intercoonecta) in collaboration with ANECA (National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation of Spain).

Throughout 9 months, 53 Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) from Latin America and the Caribbean have developed the activities, workshops and co-creation sessions that made up the itinerary together with 4 agencies and ministerial entities from the region that participated as observers. A total of 16 countries in the region were involved in the action; universities from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Spain, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay participated.

It is an itinerary of 280 hours of training in which 40 co-creation sessions were held, led by 27 experts from 6 countries, with the support of 8 UNESCO IESALC connectors. The aim of this program was to help HEIs in the LAC region to have a technical team capable of designing and implementing internal quality assurance systems and systems to improve the quality of teaching in their institutions, and to strengthen a culture of quality aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. And with this, contribute to the region having a large group of experts in quality assurance and improvement processes; aimed at adequately equipping the external quality assurance processes in the LAC region, and to promote the exchange of experiences and the mobility of students, teachers and researchers, thus developing the region’s knowledge space.

General objectives

Reflect in an informed manner on the strengthening of mutual trust between HEIs and countries through policies, shared language and instruments aimed at guaranteeing quality and recognition.
Apply the bases for the design and implementation of internal quality assurance systems and systems for the improvement of teaching quality in their institutions; and participate in external evaluation and institutional accreditation processes.
Participate in the generation of a solid corpus of quality assurance terminology for the Higher Knowledge Area in the region and beyond, in Spanish.
To carry out an internal reflection exercise on the initial state of the topics of each activity in their HEI in order to establish and carry out a consequent improvement plan based on this diagnosis.

Phases

Workshop for the design and activation of the Network. Transnational Integration of Teams

The first activity was aimed at the identification of participants and the configuration of teams, to start with the participation of each participating HEI.

Specialized training sessions

Specialized training sessions that culminated with the preparation by the teams of an End-of-Programming Project, in which the results of the analysis of their own institutions in the light of the contents of the training were presented, and in which an improvement plan was proposed for their own institution to overcome some of the aspects analyzed through the SWOT analysis. .

The topics of the training sessions were the following:

Dialogue on Academic Integrity from the Institutional perspective.
The transforming role of evaluation agencies.
Design of internal quality assurance systems.
Design of teaching quality assurance systems.
Evaluation of R+D+i and Doctoral Schools.
Sustainable development and institutional improvement.
Innovation, Diversity and Inclusion.
Perspectives of Institutional Accreditation in the region.

Evaluation of the Projects and recommendations of good practices

The last activity was focused on the development of the evaluations, carried out by a commission led by ANECA composed of 15 international experts who agreed on the recommendations that were finally addressed to each of the institutions that completed their End of Program Project. The program also developed three concomitant products, one of which is a Model Self-Evaluation Guide to support HEIs in the development of self-evaluation processes; a regional quality glossary to unify Spanish terms related to accreditation and quality; and finally a study Diagnosis of quality in the HEIs of the region as a result of the reflections, analysis and evnedencias that were expressed throughout the itinerary, so it can be considered a field work that has counted with all the points of view and reflections of the participants in the itinerary.

Slide

“What did this project mean? This project meant for all of us a relationship of friendship, of learning, where we addressed the issue of sustainability through the SDGs, where we talked about equality, integration, improvement, hope and the future”

Ana Castro
Educational advisro, UNESCO-IESALC

Slide

“We reaffirm our commitment to quality and continuous improvement. We hope this is the beginning of many collaborative spaces with colleagues from various countries”

Paraguay team

Slide

“In fact, we understood that the strategic guidelines are the key and lead to the correct execution of the university's institutional processes and we are working on the gaps we identified. We incorporated revisions, updates and are in the process of consolidating a quality culture supported by an institutional quality policy.”

Maria Celina Huaman
National University of Callao

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