STUDENTS INPUT INTO THE EVALUATION OF THEIR EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE

1. STUDENTS INPUT INTO THE EVALUATION OF THEIR EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE Vjenceslav Pejša

2. ESIB - the National Unions of Students in Europe is the umbrella organisation of 50 national unions of students from 37 countries and through these members represent over 10 million students. • The aim of ESIB is to represent and promote the educational, social, economic and cultural interests of students at a European level towards all relevant bodies and in particular the European Union, Council of Europe and UNESCO. In Croatia, students are represented by Croatian Student Council

3. STUDENTS ARE AT THE FIRST PLACE • This is a clear message and the main point of the Bologna Declaration. Students have to be a part of all the discussions and their viewpoints have to be valued the same as those of professors and teaching assistants • Students have to be members of all the bodies that are working on the preparation, creation, carrying out, and later on improving all the segments of process mentioned above. By their involvement, students want to make it possible for all the students in Europe by 2010

4. THE NEED FOR STUDENT PARTICIPATION IN THE QUALITY ASSURANCE PROCESS • Many countries and stakeholders see quality assurance (QA) as one of the cornerstones of the Bologna process and a way not only to ensure quality but to enhance it • In addition to external evaluation by national agencies, in most countries there is a legal obligation for HEIs (Higher education institutions) to perform internal evaluation and at least formally include students • . However, there is great variety in the comprehensiveness of student evaluations, the levels within the HEI (instution, faculty, programme and course) they are undertaken and wether the results lead to improvements or if they just end up a forgotten desk drawer.

5. Decisions on the level of student participation in quality assurance often fall into the autonomy of individual HEIs. • A general distinction can also be made between countries that have a sufficient level of student involvement on quality assurance procedures and those who do not. • A general distinction can also be made between countries that have a sufficient level of student involvement on quality assurance procedures and those who do not. • In general in countries with sufficient student involvement the whole system works better and in a more satisfactory way.

6. CURRENT STATE OF STUDENT INVOLVEMENT INTO EVALUATION OF THEIR EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE IN CROATIA • In reality, evaluation system does not exist in Croatian Universities. • National council for science and high education functions, and it evaluates and accredits university programs, but it does not include students. National agency for science and higher education is not fully functioning yet • Centers for quality control at universities are not formed, and student involvement in them is not defined. • - At University of Split, quality assurance boards at faculties belonging to the University which are to be founded according to the new statute of the University of Split don't have a defined status by new statutes of different faculties nor defined level of student involvement in them.

7. ECTS are being defined on a voluntary basis. - ECTS is measure for student workload required to achieve the objectives of the programme - The real student workload can be measured only by continuous research among the students • When defining standards for assigning ECTS, it is necessary to respect the differences between different scientific areas.

8. Real defining of ECTS by student workload is necessary for forming newstudying programs with real workload. - student overloading - professors competing for ECTSs - focus is not on the student workload -some departments (cathedras) and professors. - student overloading is considered to be a sign of faculty (university)prestige and prestige of the studying programme.

9. Student participation in quality assurance We can see from the results of a survey conducted by ESIB that the level of student involvement in quality assurance is very good in Nordic countries, while the worst practices exist in the countries of South-eastern Europe (although Bulgaria seems to be a positive exception), where students are generally not included in the quality assurance process. We can see that Croatia has a total lack of student involvement in quality assurance.

10. ECTS A CHAMPION OF BAD PRACTICES AND WRONG IMPLEMENTATION • ECTS has been used for more than 15 years for the purposes of credittransfer of mobile students. With the Bologna Process it started to becomemore widely known and was extended. It is now known as the EuropeanCredit Transfer and Accumulation System. The Bologna Process called forusing a credit system that is (at least) compatible with ECTS.

11. In the last yearsit became clear that most countries opted for the implementation of ECTS. Allcountries that did not use a national credit system chose to use ECTS rightaway. Countries that had been using a national system for the purposes ofcredit transfer and/or accumulation are making their systems compatible with ECTS (like the Nordic and Baltic countries). • A slightly different systemremains in Greek universities (for accumulation) and Ireland and the UK. Onlyin Bosnia-Herzegovina (both entities), Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia and SpainECTS still hardly or is just being implemented.

12. LIVING IN DENIAL – STUDENT WORKLOAD IN CROATIA • Similar problems occurred in the implementation of ECTS which hashappened some time ago • They did a real evaluation of student workload for the first yearstudents and came up with results that clearly showed that an averagestudent can not pass the first year within a year, that she/he needs at least 6additional months to be able to study and pass all the exams. When theresults were presented within the faculty the decision was not to do theworkload evaluation for the other 3 years and to divide the 60 credits to thecurrent subjects.

13. While this was happening at the faculty where theresponsibles knew and understood the concept of student workload, at mostof the other faculties professors were fighting about who would get most ofthe credits, since, again, the one who gets most credits obviously has themost important course, and the professor himself is thus the most valuableexpert at the faculty.

14. Quality of ECTS implementation It is evident from the survey conducted by ESIB that the implementation of ECTS does not accurately reflect student workload practically in entire Europe with the exception of Nordic countries where the workload calculations are done in a realistic way. ECTS by definition is “a student-centered system based on the student workload required to achieve the objectives of a programme of study”, and therefore cannot be assigned voluntarily or without significant student participation.

15. IS THE NATIONAL LEGAL FRAMEWORK IN CROATIA ENOUGH? • Early in 2003 Croatia adopted a law on higher education, which was seen asa first step to the implementation of the Bologna Process. The law gave thenecessary legal framework to implement the tools and action lines envisagedwithin the Bologna Process. Until January 2005, no changes or discussionscould be seen at the faculty or university level. • . Suddenly, in the beginning ofthis year, since the law proscribes a deadline for implementation of the twocycle system by the beginning of the academic year 2005/6, all theuniversities and faculties are starting to change their statutes and theirprogrammes. Is it realistic to expect that well thought programmes, able torespond to the needs of a country in a need of economic growth anddevelopment are to be created, evaluated and accredited properly in lessthan 6 months?

16. What was happening in Croatia is -mildly put- anincoherent rush in implementing a reform that a very small amount of thosein charge of the reform even understand; more realistically its just chaos. • In a country where the quality of a professor ismeasured by the number of students not able to pass his/her exam (basedon the principle that the less students pass the exam the more important anda better expert the professor is), this approach is quite understandable,however it still remains unacceptable.