At the beginning of 2007, ANECA, in collaboration with the Autonomous Evaluation Agencies, launched the Support Program for the Evaluation of the Teaching Activity of University Professors (DOCENTIA) in order to meet the demands of universities and the need for educational system to have its own mechanisms to assess the quality of the teaching activity of its teaching staff, to favor the best of said activity and its recognition.
Within the framework of the recommendations for Quality Assurance in higher education institutions (ESG) prepared by the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA), there is the Quality Assurance of Teaching Staff (ESG 1.4). This recommendation establishes that institutions must ensure that their teaching staff is qualified and their teaching skills are adequate. In the same way, the standards established by The Joint Committee of Standards for Educational Evaluation in the document The Personnel Evaluation Standards have also been taken into account.
In January 2007, the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA) and the Balearic Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (AQUIB) signed a collaboration agreement for the implementation of the DOCENTIA Program (Support Program for Evaluation of Teaching Activity). In February 2022, a renewal of the agreement, that gives continuity to the previous one, was signed .
Objective
The objective of the DOCENTIA program is to help universities in the design of their own mechanisms to manage the quality of the teaching activity of their teaching staff, favoring their development and recognition.
Phases of the program
Phase I: DESIGN
In this phase, the university carries out the design of the teaching activity evaluation manual in accordance with the DOCENTIA model and sends it to the Agency for evaluation.
Phase II: EXTERNAL EVALUATION OF THE DESIGNS
The model sent to the Agency is evaluated by an external commission. The purpose of this phase is to recognize compliance with the specifications and criteria of the DOCENTIA model.
Phase III: MONITORING OF IMPLEMENTATION
The universities whose designs have been positively evaluated start the implementation and send an annual report to the Agency.
Phase IV: CERTIFICATION AND MONITORING OF THE CERTIFICATION
Once the design has been fully implemented and the follow-up phase has been successfully passed, universities will be able to opt for the certification of their evaluation procedures.
Once the implementation is certified, the university must send an annual certification follow-up report
Development of the evaluations
The universities of the Balearic Islands will develop their model and evaluation procedure of the teaching activity of its teaching staff, based on the DOCENTIA program model. This model will be sent to AQUIB, who will evaluate it in the different phases provided by the program: evaluation of the model, monitoring of its implementation, and certification of the implementation of the evaluation model.
The evaluation carried out by AQUIB in the different phases of the DOCENTIA program is performed following its own guidelines and will be done by an external evaluation commission chosen from a joint database with ANECA. These people will have received training from ANECA and AQUIB in coordination with the other Spanish agencies.
In the framework of the agreement between AQUIB and ANECA, the evaluation bodies of ANECA (Commission for the evaluation of the Design, Monitoring and Certification of the models of the DOCENTIA Program and the Commission for the evaluation of the AUDIT and DOCENTIA programs) are responsible bodies for evaluating the model sent to AQUIB by the University.
The composition of the commissions can be consulted at the following link, in the section "Assessment by committees":
Evaluation bodies of the DOCENTIA program (ANECA)
The national register of certified universities within the framework of the DOCENTIA program is managed by ANECA. It can be consulted at the following link:
Register of certified Universities (DOCENTIA program)
