Students Mobility Task Force
Students Mobility keeps growing every day. As a consequence of this situation, the EUNIS Students Mobility Task Force was conceived to boost collaborative project work fostering real cooperation among its members. The TF also promotes the flow of information between institutions and other stakeholders through the dissemination of results. Sharing the results will benefit students and institutions and will support the development of a better+ European Higher Education Area.
GOAL
- Disseminate the work of European initiatives to widen the network of institutions using their services. The more participants involved in the exchange of data the better.
- Get more institutions, entities and people actively involved in the initiatives related to the exchange of data between institutions.
- Determine and define the use of standardized digitalized data to improve, modernized and update the current processes through the exchange of this data.
Watch the video on the Students Mobility TF activity.
CURRENT PROJECTS:
The overall aim is to achieve a sufficient level of interaction between institutions, HEIs and entities to develop a common work space where everyone can join and get involved in order to introduce or contribute to a building block providing services that aim to simplify mobility programs and all processes involved.
ERASMUS WITHOUT PAPER (EWP) is a project that aims to create an electronic and digital support network of exchangeable data and academic information from all students that take part in exchange programs. Their service is all about providing an integral solution which covers the management processes that Erasmus students must take care of, from the exchange of information of the bilateral agreement between universities to delivering the Certificates of Arrival and Departure or the academic results. The information included is:
- Key data about the institution
- Information about the agreement between institutions.
- A list of the students nominated for an exchange in a host university.
- The Learning Agreement (including data from the course catalogue).
- Certificate of Academic Results (TOR)
The target users are administrative personnel in the institutions that are involved in the exchange process, usually International Relations Officers. EWP is based on an open source approach and is therefore extendable for future use-cases. For more information see: https://www.erasmuswithoutpaper.eu.
EMREX is a proven method for electronic transfer of achievement records between higher education institutions in Europe and beyond. EMREX allows students to obtain their achievement records in a structured format and transfer it automatically to their home university or another recipient, while ensuring their privacy and safety during the whole process. After a successful field trial, co-funded by Erasmus+, the network is ready to roll-on, and new partners are joining. EMREX is also expanding into supporting admission and credential evaluation with transferring electronic achievement records. For more information see: https://www.emrex.eu.
OLA (On-line Learning Agreement) is an on-line platform to digitalize the Learning Agreement used in Erasmus+ exchanges between higher education institutions and students. From 2015 to 2017 the OLA has underwent the largest field trial of its kind in Europe, with more than 7000 agreements generated and a student satisfaction rate of 87%. Participant surveys found that Learning Agreements generated electronically are far more likely to have all required fields dully filled in, are faster to complete and considerably easier to amend during the mobility. The OLA has also been integrated in the Erasmus+ App for a easier access, while the next phase of the project – called OLA+ – will focus on enhancing the functionality of the tool from the IROs and coordinators perspective. Ensuring more students have an agreed Learning Agreement prior to the start of their mobility and that it remains updated throughout the exchange will ensure easier compliance with audits, as well as enhance the process of credit recognition for mobile students. The OLA is available at https://learning-agreement.eu.
EGRACONS (European Grade Conversion System) is a grade conversion tool designed to enable institutions to convert the academic results from the host university to the grading system of the home university when these are transferred. With EGRACONS this conversion can be done without the need of being integrated in another system. The methodology used is fully compatible with the ECTS users’ guide. The project finished in 2015 but the database continues to be updated and maintained, and the tool itself is fully operational. Making Egracons compatible with EWP is also included in the EWP 2.0. follow-up project. The tool is not open to students. For more information see: http://www.egracons.eu.
The TF is currently run by Carmen Diaz (SIGMA, Spain): students.mobility@sigmaaie.org. If you want to join the TF, please ask for subscribtion to the mailing list: studentsmobility@eunis.org.
Read the history of the group here.