Assessing outcomes and impact of internationalisation
Benchmarking in internationalisation seems to have an increased value if preceded by self-evaluation. External guidance helps institutions to learn how to prepare, execute and analyse benchmarking and look at different internationalisation approaches. These are some of the main conclusions of the final workshop of the IMPI project.
Another important conclusion is that sufficient background information is required to make a comparison with sound conclusions.
Insight into performance
The EU Project ‘Indicators for Mapping and Profiling Internationalisation’ (IMPI), funded under the Erasmus programme, was initiated in 2009. It aims to provide higher education institutions with an insight into their performance in internationalisation and into measures for improvement.
This aim should be reached through the development of a common list of ‘indicators of internationalisation’.
Participants from across Europe
In two testing rounds, each consisting of three workshops, universities from all parts of Europe used the indicator list and commented on its usefulness. During the final workshop, on 9 and 10 February, participants discussed strategies and procedures as well as getting institutional commitment to implement internationalisation strategies.
The more heterogeneous groups experienced that learning from each other’s best practices needed more ‘translation’ to their own situation than in more homogeneous groups.
It was confirmed once again that there is a need for assessing outcomes and impact of internationalisation. This is still very difficult to measure for reasons of data collection and establishing relations between cause and results.
The IMPI tool includes a paper that explains some of the terms related to outcomes measurement and gives a few suggestions on how to approach this difficult topic.
Final stage of the project
Now that universities from all over Europe have used and discussed the indicators that have been developed, the project is coming to its final stage. In September 2012, the project report will be published with examples of best practices. At that time the IMPI toolbox will become publicly available at www.impi-project.eu.
More information on IMPI
A seminar open to anyone who is interested will be held in Brussels on 10 May 2012. At Nuffic’s annual Conference on 13 March, a special session on Benchmarking will be presented.
Nuffic is one of the core partners in the IMPI project. It joined the project because of its expertise and activities in measuring internationalisation, among which the development of the MINT webtool.