The i-hub Guided Self-Assessment Process – the BKaL way

From 1-4 July 2019 in Cologne, Germany, the Berufskolleg and der Lindenstrasse (BKaL) organized the second Guided Self-Assessment (GSA) in Europe under the UNESCO-UNEVOC Skills for Innovation Hubs (i-hubs) initiative.

The BKaL self-assessment featured an important new development in the Guided Self-Assessment process. It was the first self-assessment to include a remote consultation of the internal stakeholders through an on-line survey. This exercise, which was developed by the BKaL i-hub team led by Lars Lamers, Director of Studies at BKaL, enabled a much broader group of some 75 internal stakeholders to take part in the consultation process. The results showed that, with some adaptations, a remote survey could be an efficient way of engaging more stakeholders in the self-assessment process, which could also be tried in other i-hubs.

The GSA generated valuable data and evidence to help measure BKaL’s preparedness for innovation, and to identify the Innovative Practice and Innovation Action Plan. The results confirmed that BKAL is implementing a broad institution-wide approach to innovation. The school principal, Aleksandra Langner noted that ‘working with i-hubs encouraged us to think deeply about our strategic approach to innovation for school development’.

In the case of BKaL, documenting the existing Innovative Practice and reinforcing the Innovation Action Plan both focused on the same initiative called BKaL 360°. As explained by Lars Lamers, the BKaL 360° Initiative will be consolidated through the Innovation Action Plan, which will help BKaL to ”develop a new strategy to cater for the needs and interests of learners who want to pursue a career in business and administration in an ever more competitive labor market and fast changing expectations of employers”.

The GSA was facilitated by Lars Lamers, Director of Studies at BKaL, with support from Giovanni Nocera and Tanja Wege, the BKaL project team for i-hubs. The UNESCO-UNEVOC team comprised Wilson Lima Junior, Katarina Ormuz, Jan Otero and Peter Greenwood.