In June 2022, ACA has been active in two project meetings and a final conference. You can read bellow the short reports from the IHES, Study in Europe and PROFFORMANCE meetings and events, stretching from Tarragona, over Paris, to Budapest.

IHES meeting in Tarragona

Internationalisation in Higher Education for Society (IHES) project partners met on 15 and 16 June in Tarragona, for a transnational project meeting, hosted by Universitat Rovira I Virgili. The consortium discussed further developing the IHES Online Repository of activities fitting into the scope of IHES (connecting both international and societal aspects within different activities), which was developed in parallel to the IHES Mapping Report. The project partners also provided updates on the newly started IHES activities in URV Tarragona and Palacky University Olomouc as part of the IHES regional labs. The running activities include Climate change witnesses - collection of international witnesses of different effects of climate change, Student Mobility in Learning English (SMILE) programme, SUSTAINCOMP project focusing on collecting, restoring and further delivering old computers to those in need, teaching street law to secondary students and many more. These activities will be presented this Autumn in two open seminars in Catalunya and Olomouc region including several representatives from local civil society, research and academic institutions. Based on the experiences collected in the regional labs, IHES guidelines will be produced and an IHES network of supporting organisations will be established in the upcoming period of the project.

Study in Europe

 On 13-14 June 2022, ACA representatives attended in Paris the highly interactive networking meeting hosted by Campus France under the #StudyInEurope project. Representatives of national promotion agencies from 24 European countries, many of them also ACA members, as well as of the European Commission, took part in the event. Conceived as a peer learning and networking opportunity between peer organisations, the event facilitated an exchange between participants on their evolving practices in terms of marketing of higher education, as well as in thematic areas such as – global context of higher education (with a keynote speech by IAU’s Secretary-General Hilligje van’t Land), inclusive mobility and diversity, green mobility and sustainability, mobility trends, high quality welcome services, digital transitions and support for Ukrainian students and scholars.

PROFFORMANCE final conference

The PROFFORMANCE consortium organised the project’s final conference, entitled "Spotlight on Higher Education Teaching Performance," on 16 June 2022 in Budapest, Hungary. 

The conference was an opportunity to present to the public what has been achieved by the project, which aims to build a bridge between European countries, as well as European higher education institutions, and what will follow in the consortium from 2022 to 2025.

Round-table discussions involved project partners and experts of the field, while best practice examples from the PROFFORMANCE Teaching Excellence Database were shared in workshops. During an interactive session, participants also had the opportunity to try the Assessment Tool developed in the framework of the project, which supports the evaluation of higher education teachers’ performance, thereby enhancing the quality of higher education teaching. Further to this, the Award Ceremony took place, where the International Higher Education Teacher Awards, were handed, recognizing the most innovative teaching ideas.

Next up for the consortium is the PROFFORMANCE+ project, which aims to continue this guiding and supporting mission for higher education actors at all relevant levels, with special focus and address to HE teachers with a parallel bottom-up and top-down approach. The PROFFORMANCE+ project, will officially start the coming September.