The aim of this group of activities is to ensure high quality outputs and processes.

General approach.

The Quality Plan will include activities of formative evaluation and quality. It is closely linked and to some extent interlocked with activities of evaluation, which have a summative aim for the project progresses and achievements.

Within this work package, the consortium:

– will agree on quality criteria, methods and responsibilities (quality planning);

– will identify procedures to be put in place during the project to ensure the implementation of adopted methods and techniques (quality control);

– will perform the activities needed to assure quality (quality assurance).

The consortium is committed to provide:

– a preliminary external review on quality criteria, for key outputs;

– a continuous internal quality review (peer review);

– a quality register, where the results of the review process will be recorded.

As a general quality standards, these will be applied to all outputs implying documents delivery, such as e.g. Provision of document summary/introduction; project format standards compliance; Acceptable language, grammar and spelling; Objectives of the outputs covered; Acceptable quality of text (organisation, structure, diagrams etc.); Coverage of expected work; Comprehensiveness (no missing sections, missing references, unexplained arguments); Usability (output is clear and provided in a form that is useful to the reader).

As specific quality standards, that will be applied both to written documents above mentioned, and all other activities performed during the project, these will be first drafted by the project partners, then proposed to external users (recruited in the partners’ networks), to include users’ point of view on project quality criteria.

The External Evaluator will be subcontracted under this WP, and also activities related to impact evaluation are therefore included here. Impact evaluation will be a chapter of the Quality Plan, revised after the agreement with the external evaluator. Time, contributors and ways in which the document will be modified will be recorded in the History of the document’s table.

Evaluation and quality reports will be generated to indicate status and make recommendations for improvement: these will be two in the frame of the project (at mid-term and final). However, ongoing results of each formative evaluation, summative evaluation and quality will be shared on the online collaboration space of the consortium.

Partners’ organisation of work.

UNIMED will coordinate quality activities, and will be in charge of delivering the quality plan, completed with tools, and to draft the proposal for quality criteria to be adopted in the frame of the project; UNIMED will be also in charge to keep updated the Quality Register, that is intended online and accessible by all partners. Partners will participate to quality activities all over the project, and will consult stakeholders toward the final adopted quality criteria.

Milestones.

Draft of the Quality Plan completed with quality criteria, M3

Agreed Quality Plan, M6

Performance indicators

At least 1 quality assurance exercise carried out for each output of the project

Links with other WPs.

WP6 encompasses and it is integrated to all other WPs; WP6