AUCEA Benchmarking Project Workshop: A workshop to develop a framework for university-community engagement benchmarking

The Austrlian Universities Community Engagement Alliance (AUCEA) have decided to undertake a national project to establish a framework for benchmarking university-community engagement in Australia. As a first step in the development of this framework, a workshop is planned to: • Identify the key elements to the process of university-community engagement benchmarking. • Identify the nature and content of information collection to be used in university-community benchmarking. • Identify the next steps, with a view to: • Support being obtained for an implementation program over a six month period; and • Completed benchmarking evaluations being presented at the 2006 AUCEA Conference. The Workshop will run over two Conference sessions. The first session, AUCEA Benchmarking Project Workshop I, will provide background, literature, objectives, management arrangements, and an outline of the project. In particular, the session will explore elements to be covered in the process of benchmarking university/ community engagement. It will include discussion about agreed principles, and concepts for inclusion in the project such as self-evaluation, peer review, mutual agreement, etc as well as information collection methods. The second session, AUCEA Benchmarking Project Workshop II, will discuss the content of the information collection required to compile an effective benchmarking framework for university/ region engagement. This session will also discuss steps, through the project, for implementation of the completed benchmarking framework