Dissemination Plan
Monitoring is seen as critical to the success of the project - given the ambitious goals and the time scale. Monitoring will help the coordinator to predict the development of the project and will prepare the project team for pressure points in the course of the project life span. The virtual campus will host all the activities, communications and the products of the project. This tool will allow the coordinator/partners to continuously monitor the progress towards the stated objectives. PMU meetings will be organized focusing on project management, monitoring and evaluation. Monitoring will record all that has happened during the life of the project. It may include minutes of meetings, agendas, contracts, the syllabus for training courses etc.
The evaluation plan will be an important part of the project and will include: self-evaluation and external evaluation. The evaluation process will aim to: simplify the consultation process within the project partnership, assist the project coordinator in quantifying results and relating these to the project objectives, reduce the workload of constructing the final or interim reports. The evaluation process should be seen as a number of stages: (1) planning for evaluation; (2) collecting and interpreting evidence; (3) using the evidence to implement changes; (4) incorporating the evaluative data into the final report.
The evaluation plan will include different aspects like: the project structure (taking into account the objectives, products, timescale, the innovation, and the European dimension) and the project management (taking into account the quality of the project management, administration, financial management, partnership, communication among partners).
Collecting and interpreting the data (quantitative and qualitative evidence) will be included into the project planning. Quantitative evidence may include, for example, the number of persons attending a event, the number of "hits" on a website etc. Qualitative evidence will take into account issues like equal opportunities issues (people with different perspectives).
The evidence collected by the project team will be the subject of a review meeting between members of the partnership. The purpose is to update partners on the evaluative process, to share the evidence and to decide on any changes needed to the project work plan. All the evaluation data will be incorporated in the final reports.
The internal evaluation will allow the consortium to review progress towards meeting the agreed specification. It will provide feedback to the developers on the extent to which their work to date is meeting the technical and educational objectives of the project and the functional and technical specifications. This internal evaluation will be achieved during the meetings of the Project Management Unit.
Three independent experts will be invited for external evaluation.