The UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education jointly with its partner organizations launches the webinar series “Harnessing Technology to Transform Education” aimed to strengthen global and regional partnerships towards the innovative and ethical use of digital technologies in education for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4).
Applying Benchmarking for Better Performance of Open Universities
On 21 March 2023, the first webinar “Applying Benchmarking for Better Performance of Open Universities” will be held in partnership with Shanghai Open University (SOU) within the joint project “Promoting ICT Capacity Building and Open Education in the Era of AI and Digital Technologies”.
Background
SDG 4 aspires to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” by 2030. To achieve the targets of SDG4, open universities have a significant role to play. By implementing the core vision and mission that advocate the removal of constraints and barriers related to age, gender, nationality, background, geographical location or time, open universities contribute considerably to expanding access to education for a wider audience of potential students and meeting their diverse needs.
Embracing the potential of digital technologies to deliver education and adapting to global changes in societies accelerated during the Fourth Industrial Revolution as well as facilitating lifelong learning opportunities for all requires open universities to constantly evaluate their relevance, responsiveness, quality and accountability to their stakeholders and the students they serve.
Benchmarking is arguably a critical exercise for open universities to improve the performance. It is an opportunity for open universities to continue to grow and excel beyond the basic requirements of their mandates as well as an extension of quality assurance processes that open universities may already have in place. There are many benchmarking approaches and practices developed and applied globally as helpful diagnostic evaluation tools mainly for conventional higher education institutions while benchmarking framework tailored to the needs of open universities is still to be elaborated.
Objective
The webinar “Applying Benchmarking for Better Performance of Open Universities” is intended to foster a discussion on how open universities can benefit from benchmarking with the aim of improving their performance. During the meeting, the draft document “Benchmarking for Open Universities: Guidelines and Good Practices” developed on the initiative of UNESCO IITE and SOU will be presented for further comments and suggestions.
Tentative agenda
- Opening and welcome remarks
UNESCO IITE and SOU representatives (TBD) - Presentation of the draft document “Benchmarking for Open Universities: Guidelines and Good Practices”
Mr. Neil Butcher, Director at Neil Butcher & Associates - Discussion and comments on the presented draft document for its further improvement
The webinar will be held online via Zoom on 21 March 2023, 11:00 UTC+1 (Paris).
Registration
The registration form is available here.