Institutional

DOCENTIA

The Support Programme for the Evaluation of the Teaching Activity of University Teaching Staff (DOCENTIA) is a programme developed by ANECA to help higher education institutions in the development and application of their own mechanisms to manage the quality of the teaching activity of university teaching staff and to promote their development. Unibasq, together with other agencies, has collaborated in the design and updating of this programme, which has been developed institutionally by the universities of the Basque University System (SUV).

The DOCENTIA Programme takes as a reference the recommendations for Quality Assurance in Higher Education institutions elaborated by the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) in its document Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area. In addition, the programme design has considered the standards established by internationally recognised organisations in the field of personnel evaluation, such as The Personnel Evaluation Standards, developed by The Joint Committee of Standards for Educational Evaluation.

Based on a collaboration agreement signed with ANECA, Unibasq carries out the evaluation, monitoring and certification of the teaching activity evaluation models developed by the universities of the Basque University System. To this end, it uses ANECA documentation and jointly appoints a DOCENTIA Programme Evaluation Committee with the agency, which jointly prepares the technical evaluation reports corresponding to the different phases of the programme.

ANECA’s DOCENTIA Programme includes the following phases:

Phase I: Design and evaluation of the teaching evaluation manuals

Higher education institutions submit their evaluation programme based on the model proposed by the DOCENTIA programme. In this phase, the evaluation is carried out by Unibasq with the aim of recognising compliance with the specifications and criteria of the DOCENTIA model.

Phase II: Implementation and monitoring

Once the manuals have been favourably evaluated, the institutions start their pilot implementation. The institutions prepare an annual report with the monitoring of the implementation of the favourably evaluated manual. The DOCENTIA Commission of Unibasq may make proposals for improvement or point out aspects that need to be improved before certification can be applied for.

Phase III: Certification

After the experimental application of the manuals for the evaluation of the teaching activity and once the monitoring phase has been successfully passed, the institutions may opt for the certification of their evaluation procedures. The DOCENTIA certificate is valid for five years, after which the institution may renew it by undergoing the certification procedure again.