Measuring and comparing learning outcomes in Europe

Do students enrolled in higher education institutions around Europe develop the competences they need? Are study programmes delivering their promises? Can we learn to compare student's achievements in different countries in a meaningful way? A new EU funded project, called CALOHEx, will help to find the answers to these questions.

International comparison

A newly developed infrastructure is intended to eventually make it possible to test bachelor and master students’ performance Europe-wide and compare these. This will be a novelty in higher education: it will be the first system in the world to do it on this scale.

It will also make it possible to determine if students are in fact prepared for their role in society (in terms of personal development, citizenship and employability) after graduation, while also meeting the academic standards associated with their area of specialisation.

Academic fields

Academics and their higher education institutions who have an interest to participate are invited to respond. The project focusses on the following academic fields:

• Business Administration
• Information Engineering/ICT
• International Relations
• Medicine
• Performing and Fine Arts

Diverse profiles

For each subject area, a working group will be created, made up of fourteen senior academics and one student. You will have the opportunity to work together to develop conceptual frameworks for your relevant subject area.

We would like to see a diverse range of institutions represented from different types (research intensive universities and universities of applied sciences), as well as a mix of institutional profiles and approaches towards education and learning.

Nuffic is a member of the Advisory Board. The role of this board is both advisory and supportive to keep the project on track and to ensure maximum impact. It will offer advice regarding the main steps, the key documents (frameworks) to be developed, as well as the documents which will focus on a follow-up of this project, the actual testing phase.

Previous results

The CALOHEx project is a follow-up of the project CALOHEE that was implemented in 2016-2018. This first project focussed on five academic fields: Civil Engineering (Engineering), Nursing (Health Care), History (Humanities), Physics (Natural Sciences) and Teacher Education (Social Sciences).

The results were published on the website: www.calohee.eu.