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Key to transnational higher education (HE) cooperation is building trust to allow for seamless recognition of studies. Building on the Tuning Educational Structures initiative (2001) and lessons learnt from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)-Assessment of Learning Outcomes in Higher Education (AHELO) feasibility study, this paper offers a sophisticated approach developed by the European Union (EU)-co-financed project Measuring and Comparing Achievements of Learning Outcomes in Europe (CALOHEE). These evidence the quality and relevance of learning by applying transparent and reliable indicators at the overarching and disciplinary levels. The model results allow for transnational diagnostic assessments to identify the strength and weaknesses of degree programmes.

The materials presented have been developed from 2016 to 2023, applying a bottom-up approach involving approximately 150 academics from 20+ European countries, reflecting the full spectrum of academic fields. Based on intensive face-to-face debate and consultation of stakeholders and anchored in academic literature and wide experience.

As a result, general (overarching) state-of-the-art reference frameworks have been prepared for the associated degree, bachelor, master and doctorate, as well as aligned qualifications reference frameworks and more detailed learning outcomes/assessment frameworks for 11 subject areas, offering a sound basis for quality assurance. As a follow-up, actual assessment formats for five academic fields have been developed to allow for measuring the actual level of learning at the institutional level from a comparative perspective.

Frameworks as well as assessment models and items are highly innovative, content-wise as in the strategy of development, involving renown academics finding common ground. Its value is not limited to Europe but has global significance. The model developed, is also relevant for micro-credentials in defining levels of mastery.

The purpose of this study is to describe the desired learning outcomes of innovation pedagogy which supports innovations and regional development in higher education.

The study is based on the socio‐cultural theory and the constructivist view of learning developed to encompass the social and cultural customs of a particular community and its ways of operating.

The study extends the individual‐based learning used in many contexts to include collaborative and networked learning to support innovations.

The results are useful for those who want to outreach and engage in regional development and increase the external impact of the higher education institution.

In this chapter, we compare five approaches for assessing competences of higher education graduates. We begin by outlining the main reasons for assessing higher education graduates’ competences. Next, we present a brief definition of competences. This definition is applied throughout the chapter, and forms the framework for comparing various approaches for measuring higher education graduates’ competences, and for discussing their relative strengths and weaknesses. We conclude that the existing approaches for assessing competences are suitable for measuring only one type of competence, that is, either cognitive or non-cognitive, but limited in their capacities to measure both. In the context of changing labor market needs and requirements, it is essential either to use these approaches in combination or to develop innovative methods which are equally suitable for measuring discipline-related as well as more generic competences. In this chapter, we discuss the assessment approaches by mainly focusing on employment-related competences. By employment-related competences we mean both cognitive and non-cognitive aspects of competences, such as personal and social skills, leadership, and communication skills.

This chapter outlines the challenges that research and practice in higher education have faced in measuring students' competences and learning outcomes. Particular attention is given to the systematic and institutional contexts in Germany. Based on the outlined national and international contextual framework, the Germany-wide program “Modeling and Measuring Competences in Higher Education (KoKoHs)” is discussed in terms of its two central working stages, key outcomes and lessons learned. In particular, the central results of the second phase are presented for the first time and integrated into the current state of international research. Based on this analysis, perspectives for further research on student learning in higher education and implications for practice and policy are derived.

Much of the literature on higher education transnational, international and cross-border partnerships emphasize the partnerships’ strategic importance to the institutions, the administrative complexities of negotiating in a different language or culture or both, and more often than not, financial gains. Other scholars discuss the importance of developing global citizens. Surprisingly, there seems to be a paucity of research on the role of faculty in cross-border and transnational partnerships. This chapter, through description of one transnational program and the literature, offers reflections that contribute to a much-needed research agenda that faculty are the keystone to forming sustainable, profitable, and strategic partnerships.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate value co‐creation in assessing higher education (HE) teaching quality by acknowledging the influence of all interacting parties: teachers, students and general university service. The paper questions the appropriateness of student satisfaction surveys for assessing lecturer performance.

By introducing co‐creation and interaction between several stakeholders the paper deals with a complex problem which is best addressed through multiple approaches. The paper uses a literature review of HE quality together with empirical case study research of one university based on data from documents, student surveys and interviews with lecturers. The data are interpreted in the light of the recent theory of service (S‐D) logic and many‐to‐many marketing.

The paper highlights the complexity of HE service and recommends that EHEA assumes a co‐creation perspective. Resources are provided by lecturers, students and university service which require an interactive approach through which the parties integrate these resources. The information asymmetry between lecturers and students invalidates student satisfaction surveys as an instrument to assess teaching quality. The complexity of HE teaching cannot be boiled down to a single number that forms the ground for comparison between lecturers.

The paper offers a more valid perspective on HE quality by applying the concepts of value co‐creation and resource integration. It shows that the current one‐sided student evaluation of teachers is inadequate.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of student‐community engagement in ensuring relevance of higher education to civil, social, economic and moral issues. It reviews the literature around three inter‐related themes: calls for higher education institutions to engage with their communities; the kinds of attributes university graduates should possess for employability and citizenship; and the pedagogies of experiential learning and reflection informing student and community engagement.

This paper evaluates and draws together international literature related to three areas: calls for universities to engage with their communities, attributes which students engaged in co‐generative community relations might develop, and pedagogies which inform and develop such engagement.

The paper draws a number of conclusions related to pedagogy, citizenship and the need to develop quality indicators of engagement and impact. The overarching conclusion is that student‐community engagement founded on principles of mutual reciprocity enhances student attributes and is an important aspect of the modern university. Higher education needs to both retrieve the traditional civic role of the university, and also look forward to creating new approaches, so that universities are “of” the community and developing graduates as citizens.

The paper includes policy implications for curriculum development in relation to fostering graduate attributes and citizenship.

Through an exploration and integration of literature related to themes of university community engagement, graduate attributes and pedagogies of experiential reflective learning the paper signposts an agenda of change for universities in the twenty‐first century.

This chapter presents the development of Comparative Education in the most representative countries for this discipline in Western Europe, taking into account the diachronic evolution (since the first texts of Jullien de Paris in 1718 or the written work of Sadler in 1900) and the synchronicity of the discipline from which our patterns of committed intellectual activism have been perceived and have consequently allowed the regulation of its current mapping.

Special reference will be given to some of the classic and renewed dilemmas that have prevailed over the decades as cross-cutting themes of interest for specialists in Comparative Education with issues related to denomination, its purposes of ideographic or nomothetic nature, its sometimes problematic entailment with International Education, the significance of the lending and transferring policies in the current scenarios or the present increasing globalization phenomenon in our educational reality, among others.

The chapter also aims at recognizing the possibilities and, at the same time, the limitations currently faced by “Comparative Educations” in Cowen´s words, through working effectively with the most idiosyncratic signs of identity in the discourse and its most immediate future projection in the coming years.

We focus our article on the reasons that support the importance of the discipline: the global evolution of the current supranational scenarios from a social, economic or cultural perspective; the state of education since the contribution of educational policies or the situation of higher education in the context of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) that, among other aspects, mark the good stage through which the analyzed discipline is experiencing.

Finally, the ratification of this statement is complemented by the firm consolidation of Comparative Education in the European context, giving reference not only to the articulation of its own associations or societies created but also to the journals emerged from them, with a notable impact on the rest of the world and their special contribution to the dissemination of the purposes of the discipline related to the generation and diffusion of policies and practices from a comparative view.