Harnessing the power of evaluation to build better international strategic partnerships between universities - The EVALUATE framework and handbook

This handbook is intended to help staff in University international offices, and those involved in international policy and strategy development, to improve the quality of international strategic partnerships through evaluation. A compact version of this handbook can be downloaded from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7330918 At its core is an evaluation framework, which presents key questions and other prompts to guide the design of evaluations. The first section introduces the framework and explains how to apply it. Rather than setting a rigid template, the framework is flexible and can be applied to a diversity of partnerships. It provides a framework for evaluation of success, failure, and everything in between. Applying this framework is a reflective activity - evaluation questions can look deceptively easy, but they are often hard to compose and answer. Designing and implementing new evaluation processes requires multiple attempts to arrive at the right level of understanding. This handbook also includes an extensive literature review, an anthology, and lessons learned by the project partners. The literature review surveys the academic and policy literature on “international strategic partnerships” between higher education institutions. It aims to highlight what research is available on such partnerships, and then to explain the general themes and insights that inform the development of the Evaluation Framework. The anthology is made up of case studies and additional writings that explore how evaluation works in practice. The lessons learned section attempts to summarise the project partner’s reflections about developing strategic partnerships and evaluating them. This handbook has been produced by the EVALUATE project – Developing a Framework for Evaluation of International University partnerships. The EVALUATE project consortium The University of Copenhagen, Denmark University College Dublin, Ireland The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom The University of Helsinki, Finland Leiden University, Netherlands The University of Sydney, Australia EVALUATE is funded under ERASMUS+ Key Action 2. The University of Edinburgh was the project coordinator. Disclaimer. This publication reflects only the author’s views and that the European Commission and UK National Agency are not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains