DILI, 16 august 2021 (TATOLI) – The National Agency for Academic Assessment and Accreditation (ANAAA), today, launched the second phase of the university programs accreditation of seven higher institutions, in Timor-Leste.
“Today, we begin the second phase assessment of the university programs accreditation, which is known as site visit assessment. The evaluation of the 24 programs of the seven universities is scheduled to commence today at UNITAL. Within this week, six programs at UNITAL would be evaluated, including agroforestry, fisheries, public health, nurse, public administration, and social communication,” said ANAAA’s Executive, Edmundo Viegas, at UNITAL Campus, in Dili, today.
Viegas said the first evaluation of the university programs was concentrated on gathering international evaluators, handing over the final reports of universities to national and international evaluators, and conducting desk assessments.
The first assessment of the 24 programs was commenced on july 24.
“Desk assessment means documental evaluation, which all reports of the universities will be assessed by the Accreditation Program Evaluators,” he said.
Viegas informed that ANAAA would conduct the same evaluation at the other universities, once the evaluation at UNITAL was concluded.
“The 24 university programs that had been registered at ANAAA, including nutrition, international relations, social communication, Tetun, and sports at National University of Timor-Lorosa’e (UNTL), public health, public administration, law, and civil construction at UNPAZ University, law, public health, nurse, public administration, social communication, agroforestry, and fisheries at UNITAL, public health, dental, nurse and petroleum engineering at University of Dili (UNDIL), computerize accounting at Institute of Business (IOB), business administration at Dili Institute of Technology (DIT), and nurse and midwifery at Cristal Institute,” Viegas said.
He said both national and international evaluators are present during the site visit assessment, saying the international evaluators would conduct their assessment virtually.
The evaluation of the 24 programs would be concluded at the end of September, affirmed Viegas.
He said previously, ANAAA had evaluated up to 105 university programs of 11 tertiary institutions, and of the number; only 18 percent achieved the ‘B’ mark, while the rest got ‘C’ mark: “Unfortunately, none of our university programs got the excellent or ‘A’ mark.”
“We still have a long way to go and more work needs to be done to achieve the excellence or ‘A’ mark. So, one of the ANAAA’s works is giving recommendations as well as courage to each institution to invest and improve the quality of the courses and institutions following the standards set by ANAAA,” Viegas added.
At the same place, the Rector of UNITAL, Florindo Pereira informed that of the six programs at UNITAL, the agroforestry department would be evaluated first by ANAAA.
“Today, an international evaluator from the Philippines and two national evaluators would evaluate the department of agroforestry. So, during the evaluation, ANAAA would look at the documents, curriculum, teaching methods, laboratory, lecturers, alumni, and so on,” said Pereira.
Journalist: Filomeno Martins
Editor: Nelia Borges Rosario
