Comparative study of evaluator training programs and their operation, as conducted by external quality assurance agencies in overseas countries

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The purpose of this study is to examine evaluator training programs offered by external quality assurance agencies in the United States and four European countries, and based on the results, to seek desirable training programs applicable to Japanese accrediting organizations. The outline and results of our study are stated below.1.The questionnaire survey was conducted at Japanese universities nationwide in order to determine the status of internal training programs thus enabling evaluators to carry out "self-study" within each individual university and to search for "desirable evaluator training programs" that each university may wish to receive from university accrediting organizations. The response rate was 78% of those surveyed, thus demonstrating a high level of interest regarding this issue.2.To learn about evaluator training programs employed by the US university accreditation system, the scope of the survey included a total of ten institutions, specifically, four regional accre … More diting organizations and six specialized and professional accrediting organizations. The survey was conducted by two methods : 1)participation in training programs offered by three of the organizations and 2)interview of eight of the organizations. Such research in the United States enabled us to deepen our understanding of the current conditions of their evaluator training programs and to facilitate our collection of related materials. We were thus able to offer a better contribution to the improvement of evaluator training programs in Japan.3.Through this survey, which was conducted in four countries in Europe, namely United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany and France, it was found that evaluator training programs are not provided in these countries, with the exception of the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, by learning about each nation's educational reform movements aimed at attaining higher quality assurance in their systems of higher education, as based on the "Bologna Declaration," we were able to obtain useful suggestions on the proper level of quality assurance that should be achieved by Japanese universities after implementation of the certified evaluation system. It was also discovered that although they employ different evaluation systems, the United States and United Kingdom have similar ideas regarding evaluators and their training. Therefore, Japanese accrediting organizations have many things to learn from the training programs of these two nations, despite of a slight difference in actual practices. Less