Milestone 1: Higher Quality and Inclusive Postgraduate Education

A tool to monitor competence development (E-portfolio) has been developed by researchers

An E-portfolio is a smart and learner-centred online multimedia tool that scaffolds and visualises (future) (healthcare) professionals’ continuous competency development at the workplace by facilitating the learning cycle of goal setting, reflection, feedback and assessment as well as by stimulating collaboration between all stakeholders involved in workplace learning. It is a digital learning record that provides actual evidence of achievements. As such E-portfolios, are considered as an important tool to innovate workplace learning in healthcare education. Currently, both the design and the implementation of E-portfolios are researched through an interdisciplinary consortium of Ghent University, Catholic University of Leuven, Artevelde University and College of Ghent (see scaffold-project for more details), but it has also been evaluated and tested in the midwifery program of the University of Rwanda through a VLIR-UOS Innovation Project (2018-2020) that was coordinated by Mieke Embo (manager of the Scaffold project and team member of this sub-project). In this sub-project, we will research an E-portfolio to follow-up competence development within home-grown PhD programs in Ethiopia, applying the methodology developed within the Scaffold project. An Ethiopian female PhD student will be attached to this research work.

More well-trained PhD students and skilled staff to lead research and supervise PhD students with a focus on gender equity

We aim to contribute to more competent PhD students and skilled staff, while ensuring a gender equity (see also other SPs). To this end, short softs skills courses will be provided to both PhD students (e.g. presentation skills, slides, language proficiency and posters; other specialized courses will also be offered through SPs 2 and 3) and staff (agile leadership). In addition, a staff mentorship program shall be launched and implemented to share both experiences and good practices between junior (mentee) and senior academic staff (mentors). For this, we will tap from ongoing mentorship programs both in Ethiopian and Belgian HEI.

Strengthen educational programs leading to increased numbers of PhD students that successfully complete thesis

We aim to strengthen existing PhD programs, and hence increasing the number of students that graduate within the expected study period with high quality research outputs. To achieve this, a consensus will first be reached on the required competences for successful PhD graduates among all involved universities. Meanwhile, we also make an inventory of available (e-)course materials used by the partner universities. Based on these two activities, we will develop and implement a shared PhD program. To realize the implementation of the revised and updated PhD programs, we will establish a mobility fund for (inter)national PhD lecturers.

Mechanisms for interuniversity collaborations to deliver a shared postgraduate education program is put in place

To realize the shared postgraduate education through collaboration, the involved universities will update their institutional policies (i) to ensure high quality and inclusive PhD education programs; (ii) to include interuniversity collaboration for supervision of PhD students as part of the academic promotion trajectory. The updated policies will be made effective by signing a MoU on the delivery of a shared postgraduate education program