Hellen van Berlo

Is the head of the department of educational development and quality assurance at LUCA School of Arts. We have a team of approximately 10 colleagues supporting our programmes. Hot topics are blended and online learning and evaluating art. We support our teachers by organizing online and on campus meetings and in 2022 hope to be able to organize an on campus meeting-day LUCA-MEeT again: a day on which we share good practices, show new tools, ideas, projects to each other. The main purpose is to inspire all participants.

Our department is also responsible for the LUCA quality framework KOPERA. In Flanders each institution is entitled to develop its own quality methods. KOPERA stands for analyzing the quality of our programmes together with critical peers. Every year we organize several panel visits that monitor a programme based on 9 quality criteria, a portfolio of the programme and several campus visits. Two years ago we supported DocNomads in their self evaluation report according to the European approach for joint programmes in order to get (successfully) accreditated.

Before LUCA I worked 10 years for CITO in the Netherlands. CITO is an institute for educational measurement. I was coordinator of a team that for example was developing exams Dutch as a second language. I also joined a project in which we supported the Latvian government in developing tests in Latvian as a second language for the large minority of Russians living in Latvia. This was a very interesting experience. Combining politics and test-development was not always an easy task.