One of the GINCO activities aiming at raising the quality of delivery of Grundtvig IST courses is the GINCO Award. Up till now the quality control of Grundtvig courses has been limited to the feedback the course participants give to their National Agency when sending in their reports. In the case of negative feedback by the participants the NA of the organizing country contacts the course organiser to check what went wrong and discusses measures to improve things. Repeated negative feedback can lead to removal from the data base. But a real quality label does not exist. Therefore the GINCO Award selection – a ‘test’ quality label for Grundtvig courses – has been carried out by the GINCO network in 2012 in cooperation with the National Agencies.

The NAs were asked to select up to 8 courses that had been clearly rated and described as ‘excellent’ by their IST beneficiaries in their final report. As the selection of the courses was based on the participants’ feedback, the courses could only be those that took place outside the country of the respective NA.

Once the ‘pre-selection’ by the NAs was completed the GINCO partners sent an on-line survey to the organisers of the selected courses in order to obtain additional information concerning the specific quality criteria that were set out by the consortium for this first Award. A label would be granted in three categories:

 1. “Innovative use of ICT in all aspects of course delivery”

This included the use of ICT in respect of both the delivery of course content and its practical use in the implementation of the course, e.g. the provision of pre-course and post-course information.

 2. “Excellence in validating outcomes for participants”

This covered all aspects of the recognition of learning outcomes provided for the participants by the course organiser. A certificate of attendance is a mandatory feature of an IST course, but a valuable certificate should at least have references to learning outcomes.

 3. “Quality of course content and pedagogy”

This reflected the extent to which the course was delivered as advertised on the course database, the quality assurance mechanisms in place to ensure participant’s expectations were met and proper pedagogical approaches and course materials were used.

Specific questions on these topics were asked and course organizers were also asked to provide material and texts supporting their answers. A course could only get an award in one of the three categories.

The award winners received their award during the third GINCO conference in Hasselt (BE), September 2012. These courses were also presented as examples of good practice in the workshop sessions at that conference.

Full details of the award winners and their courses are included in the 3^rd GINCO Newsletter featured below and attached for download.