Within the scope of the Erasmus+ SMARTI project, the EMI (English Medium Instruction) centre of the Armenian National Agrarian University (ANAU), and the modules it has developed and piloted, undergo external review. For that purpose, on March 1, the expert panel held online meeting discussions with the ANAU’s vice-rector, coordinators, teaching staff and trained participants of SMARTI project and EMI centre.

Experts and a student expert from the SMARTI project’s partner HEIs are involved in the EMI centre’s external review process. The members of the expert panel are Vahe Sargsyan, Candidate of Economics, teacher at the Public Administration Academy of the Republic of Armenia, programme manager at Austrian Development Agency, Tigran Serobyan, a master’s student of the AP Financial Management at the Public Administration Academy of the Republic of Armenia,  Sona Alaverdyan, Candidate of Philological Sciences, teacher at the Goris State University, deputy director of the “A. D. Sakharov Armenian Human Rights Centre” NGO,  Meri Grigoryan, manager of quality assurance at the Goris State University, monitoring and evaluation lead at Trails for Change NGO,   Igors Tipans  Deputy Vice-rector of Studies in International Work  at Riga Technical University.

The coordinators of the expert panel are Varduhi Gyulazyan, head of ANQA’s Institutional and Programme Accreditation Division and Meri Barsegghyan, specialist of ANQA’s Policy Development and Implementation Division.

Previously, the EMI centre conducted a self-evaluation and SWOT analysis of its activities, piloted two English-language modules based on a relevant template and submitted them to the expert panel.
During the external review process, the expert panel paid attention to the following issues:

• EMI centre’s role in fulfilling the ANAU’s mission;
• policy and toolset for the EMI centre’s staff recruitment;
• mechanisms for ensuring the sustainability of EMI centre’s outcomes after the end of the SMARTI project;
• mechanisms to ensure feedback with stakeholders and continuous enhancement;
• the process of developing and piloting English-taught modules, training methodology for teaching professional subjects in English;
• mechanisms for evaluating the effectiveness of EMI modules and achieving the defined outcomes;
• challenges for the introduction and teaching of English-language modules, opportunities for further enhancement.

Next on, the expert panel will prepare a report, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of the EMI centre and the two taught modules. The report will contain recommendations on the areas in need for enhancement, highlighting the correlation between the EMI centere’s activities and the ANAU’s strategic management, and ensuring the sustainability of the centre’s activities.
 SMARTI (Support for Innovative Methodology, Approaches and Tools for Teaching through the Medium of English in order to improve Educational Yield, Sustainability and Internationalization) is a three-year multi-country project, seeking to promote a change in the system of pedagogic training of university teachers through teaching in English by modernization of curriculum for national and international spectrums.
Within the scope of the project, EMI centres were established in five Armenian HEIs and modules were piloted. Now the EMI centres and the two piloted modules undergo external review. The process coordinator is ANQA.