GRADUA Project, the Consortium meeting hosted at Agriculture University of Tirana, Albania 17-19 July 2018

A 3 days event of the “GRaduates Advancement and Development of University capacities in Albania” project

The Agriculture University of Tirana, Albania, coordinator of the GRADUA Project, hosted the GRADUA Consortium first short intensive researchers training, which was attended by a large number of participants, included the representative of Albanian Ministry of Education, Sport and Youth and Albanian students.

The meeting was a dissemination event during the first day, while the second and third days were entirely dedicated to the trainings.

Experts from AlmaLaurea Inter-University Consortium and ISCTE - Istituto Universitariò de Lisboa held the trainings on Survey methodologies. Among the main content of the Research Training: Introduction to the Graduates Profile Survey, How to develop the Graduates’ Profile Survey, Technical part: exclusion criteria (for graduates data, for questionnaires and for universities data, methodology for elaboration; criteria of the plausibility), Matching the data, Consistency check, Data Visualisation (graphic representations of data), The role of Universities, researchers and secretariat staff, Potential criticalities at questionnaire level, How to improve the questionnaire, Potential criticalities at working group level, How to improve the working group level, Suggestions and Practical example.

The specific objectives of the GRADUA project are represented by applicability, transferability and adaptation of AlmaLaurea and EU best practices to Albanian stakeholders through setting up an IT based platform in the nine beneficiary universities, available also to students and firms. The new platform will increase capacities for education reform process (provide sustainable online assessment tools for continuous collection of updated information and the release of the 1st Albanian graduate profile survey) and will help to improve the quality of the education system in Albania according to international standards thanks to competence transfer from EU partners. The GRADUA Project intends to strengthen university/labour market linkages thanks to IT based platform for demand/supply matching and assessment of skill needs by firms and best practices for internship promotion.

The GRADUA Project is co-funded by the Erasmus + Programme of European Commission.