Performance data governance and management of learning and teaching in higher education: the SQELT project

This special issue of Quality in Higher Education is dedicated to the theme of Performance Data Governance and Management (PDGM) of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. The seven articles deal with the achievements, success and desiderata of PDGM at six European universities from Austria, Belgium, Italy, Poland, Portugal and the United Kingdom and beyond. The articles arose from work done in the Erasmus+ project SQELT (Sustainable Quality Enhancement in Higher Education Learning and Teaching) that gathered ten institutional partners from nine European countries in a Strategic Partnership (SQELT, 2020). More specifically, the authors of the special issue came from eight European universities, an evaluation and quality assurance agency and a policy research centre. The SQELT project investigated PDGM in learning and teaching of higher education including its policy and core elements, for example a PDGM policy, an ethical code of practice for data analytics and a comprehensive performance indicator set. These and further relevant elements are not per se completely novel. However, at many higher education organisational places they are still often not fully known or only present in rudimentary ways related to pronounced island approaches in PDGM, which are not exactly a proof of systematic organisational effectivity and efficiency. Therefore, it was the intention of the SQELT project to produce, as far as possible with such limited resources, a systematic and integrated approach to PDGM matters that should support the universities of the partnership as well as any other interested university to improve their PDGM systems. In the light of notorious success factors of quality management and evidence-informed organisational development in higher education institutions (Leiber, 2019b, 332ff.), benchlearning and strategic SWOT analyses related to the SQELT university project partners’ actual PDGM approaches exhibited the need of several initiatives of evidence-informed organisational development to further develop, improve and refine their PDGM models. Particularly, the sample PDGM models showed the following four main organisational transformation needs. First, procedures of data processing and communication, software platforms and responsible bodies for collecting and interpreting performance indicators must be further developed to improve quality as well as usability and