Self-Developed Model for External Programme Review at Chalmers University of Technology - Stakeholder Needs and Perceptions

Paper in proceeding, 2016

Swedish models for evaluation of Quality in Higher Education (QHE models) have historically been designed by national agencies for higher education (HSV, UK-ämbetet). However, the proposal for the coming national QHE model assigns more responsibility to individual universities to develop their own QHE models. Chalmers University of Technology is developing such a local QHE model. In this paper, we focus on one of its components, namely a framework and process for programme evaluation by external reviewers, the Chalmers Programme Review Framework (Chalmers PRF). The Chalmers PRF aims to provide an external and international perspective from independent academic and industrial experts on the targeted programmes and their operational environment in the context of global best practice. The paper further accounts for the experiences from pilot testing of the evaluation framework on two MScEng (Sw. Civilingenjör) programmes – Electrical Engineering as well as Automation and Mechatronics Engineering. In particular, the relevance and utility as perceived by programme stakeholders – industry, university management, teacher and students are discussed. Even though this external programme evaluation model was developed for an institution in the Swedish context, it may be easily adapted to institutions beyond Sweden for states with engineering accreditation systems, and those without.