In preparation for the Ministry of Education Evaluation that will be conducted in 2009, even though it is still a long way off, the Colleges of Liberal Arts and Education started a series of mock evaluations last week. These evaluations are carried out by experts of relevant fields from external bodies such as researchers and senior administrators of Taiwan’s universities and academic institutions. For liberal arts disciplines, the university invited Juang Fang Rung, the Director-general of the National Central Libray, Yao Rong Song, the Director of the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Culture, Languages and Literature and Professor Liao Lung Sheng of the History Department of National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), Lo Wen Hui, the Dean of the College of Communication of National Chengchi University (NCCU), and Wang Wen Yan, the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts of the same university.

This kind evaluation on TKU’s teaching quality was introduced in 1998. Usually, the evaluated colleges or departments conduct an internal self evaluation and an external expert evaluation simultaneously. Since MOE started its evaluation on Taiwan’s higher educational institutions some years ago on a national level, both self and expert evaluations have gained significance as they help gauging what level TKU is at academically. Therefore, the university sees them, in particular the external one, as a mock exam before the real one.

The expert evaluation began with the College of Liberal Arts last week, during which departments of Information and Communication, Mass Communication and Chinese completed their evaluation. This week the team of experts will inspect the Department of Information and Library Science, History Department as well as the Graduate Institute of Chinese Linguistics and Documentation. They will first sit in a briefing followed by an examination of documentation, interviews of faulty members, staff and students, visits of teaching facilities and activities, and closed out their evaluation by a summary of their feedback at the end of the day to everyone involved.

From the feedback provided last week, it was learned that the team was quite satisfied with the extensive report prepared by the Department of Mass Communication. The experts also showed great interest in the English lectures given by each department concerned and for that they asked students who have taken or currently taking such courses for impressions. The other point of interest for them was how professors balanced teaching load and research demands and whether they receive sufficient support from the university. When measuring research, they specifically reminded the university that the disciplines in Humanities are not comparable to those in engineering and natural sciences. These experts were not shy either from issues relating to the evaluation of post-graduate programs, which will be carried out for the first time at the end of this semester.

The College of Education and the departments within will be under inspection this week and next week. The experts they have invited are all relevant to their fields. For example, Dr. Chung Si-jia from the Psychology Department of NCCU, Wu Li-Zhuan and Chen Bin-hwa from the Education Psychology and Counseling Department of NTNU, Chung Su-yuan, the Director of the Graduate School of Educational Technology of National Chiayi University, Wong Ding-ming, the Director of the Graduate Institute of e-Learning Technology of the National Hsinchu University of Eduation, Chien Cheng-chih, the Director of the Graduate School of Educational Communications and Technology of National Taipei University of Education, Chang Den-fu, the Dean of the college of Humanity of National Chi Nan University, Lin Shi-lin, the Vice President of Fu-ren Catholic University, Cheng Chong-chen, the Director of the Graduate School of Educational Policy and Management of National Taipei University of Education, Hu Jun-li, a professor at the Institute of Business and Management from National Chiao Tung University, Huang Ma, the Director of the Chang Fo-chuan Center for the Study of Human Rights of Soochow University, and Wang Hong-zen, a professor from the Graduate School of Southeast Asian Studies of National Chi Nan University among others. ( ~Ying-hsueh Hu )