The Evaluation and Meta-evaluation Design of the Quality Control Center (Presidio di Ateneo per la Qualità—PARQ)

The purpose of this paper is to describe the process of quality analysis made at the time of institution of the Quality Control Center (Presidio di Ateneo per la Qualità—PARQ), a structure for the internal quality control required by Italian law in the field of higher education that has been created at the University of Valle d’Aosta in April 2008 and chaired by a faculty member appointed by the Academic Senate. The structure has the main function to assess the quality and efficiency of teaching, developing actions to promote an increasing convergence of the results and students’ learning time in line with European standards. It also aims to permit a better understanding of the goals and guidelines set by the Bologna Process in order to improve the performance, and in that sense to undertake actions for monitoring and evaluation of educational planning procedures, timing of collection of data and proceeds to the design and calibration of tools used, ensuring that the evaluation system is periodically reviewed for the positive or negative impact it produces. This required the assumption of a first evaluation analysis model of the university reality. The contribution explains the path that the PARQ followed in the process of annual review of the rules of tenure and promotion of activities and evaluation’s equipment. It is demonstrated how this structure has developed a coherent plan for the evaluation of teaching and student services and a process of meta-evaluation regarding the annual revision of the evaluation management of the rules and roles and promotion of activities and tools of assessment used.