The fourth and last EMREX Newsletter for this year is out!

Getting in touch with students

The first year of the EMREX field trial is soon ending with marvelous results. Students in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Italy have succesfully transferred their transcript of records between home and host institution with positive feedback. This creates a promising basis for future testing as our current focus is to identify and get in contact with students coming back from their abroad studies at the turn of the year 2016. the field trial is for students who have been studying in any of the pilot countries, Norway, Finland, Sweden or two universities in Italy, the unversitie of Sienna and the university of Verona or four universities in Denmark, university of Copenhagen, Roskilde University, Aalborg University and Technical University of Denmark. The project welcomes all help available to find those students! Due to limitation of acces times to their studens’ account after finished studies, most of them need to log in as soon as possible after they got their credits registered. The field trial will keep rolling throughout the spring of 2017 and the next big search for students wil thus occur during the end of next semester in spring/summer 2017.

Seminar in Helsinki in January

To provide an opportunity for participants and stakeholders to keep up to date a seminar and stakeholder forum will be organized in Helsinki . Finland on 31.1-1.2.2017 if you are interested in joining the seminar all information can be found at the project website EMREX seminar 2017.

EMREX Poland ready for deployment

The newest official version of student information systems USOS developed by Polish partner (University of Warsaw) fir the consortium of more than 50 Polish Higher Education Institutions (MUCI) contains the EMREX module which offers functionality of both SMP and NCP. The decision to join EMREX network will be op to the local authorities. A special workshop for Polish HEIs, members of MUCI, is planned to take place in Warsaw in the early January 2017. The main topic will be the new admission system, used for recruitment of prospective students for diploma studies, short-term studies, and internal mobility (part of MOST program. Read more about the Polish solution in the EMREX portal: Case Study: Poland

EMREX is of interest!

The EMREX solution has attracted a lot of interest among various stakholders in Europe and betond, and the project is continuously working on expanding collaborations. Technical co-operation is ongoing with DUO in the Netherlands and VTAC in Australia to join the EMREX network. SIGMA in Spain has also declared their interest in becoming an EMREX partner in addition to ongoing talks with several others. Emrex is also working closely with DG EAC in Brussels to find synergies with oher EU-sposored project (e.g. Erasmus Without Papers and FAIR) and upcoming new initiatives.

Ongoing work with evaluation

Later during spring 2017 there will also be an interview tour conducted in all project countries, run by evaluating partner University of Warsaw. Administrative staff working with credit transferring and exchange students will be asked about routines and possible future effects of EMREX.

EMREX presented two times in Brussels this December

The Emrex project has been presented two times at Euopean meetings in Brussels this month. 1st of December at the annual NARIC meeting and again 14th of December at an Erasmus+ National Agencies event, where the European Commission strongly urged the National Erasmus Agenvies to find Higher Education Institutions to join EMREX.

The European Commission has also issued a support letter for EMREX, where they state the importance of the work being done in our project.

During the fall EMREX also e.g. held a session on mobility at the EAIE conference in Liverpool and discussed further cases at the Nordforum meeting in Oslo EMREX has been, and will continue to be present at many external events, including conferences, seminars and workshops involving a range of stakeholdes from various positions.

Your EMREX team

Field Trial Newsletter 3/5

For internal and external use

The Third EMREX Newsletter is out!

One and a half year into the project, EMREX is at its halfway point, and a lot of progress has been made in exploring new ways to make the credit transfer and recognition easier via technological development and innovation, stakeholder engagement and awareness-raising.

A federated solution that allows interoperability and information sharing between different student record management systems across Europe has been produced by the EMREX team, including a high degree of flexibility in its local implementation. A field trial to test the usability of the solution with student and administrators from higher education institutions from porject countries began in the late spring 2016 and will go on until July 2017. Several students from Sweden, Norway and Finland have succesfully retrieved their student information fro their host institutions involved in the project. Italy joined the trial after the summer and is now anxiously waiting feedback from its first users, whilst Denmark will join the trial later this year.

In parallel, the project has been investigating the role and impact of the new EMREX solution in student exchange, compiling feedback from former exchange students about their experiences with and expectations for recognition process across Europe. Another survey is conducted among EMREX users to understand better the end users and their needs. This will allow the EMREX team to build towards producing viable and scalable solutions for more efficient and enhanced credit transfer and recognition

EMREX has attracted significant attention and various stakeholders in Europe and beyond have already expressed their interest in EMREX solution. EMREX has been, and will continue to be, present at many external events, including conferences, seminars, and workshops involving a range of stakeholders from various positions. The latest presentation, including our new video, was given at EAIE conference in Liverpool, taking lace from 13th to the 16th of september 2016. A seminar and stakeholder forum will be organized in Helsinki, Finland on 31.1-2.2.2017. Finally, interested stakeholders can also keep up with project activities and related news by following our website at emrex.eu

With a fruitful one and a half year gone by the project team is excited to continue working towards the project’s objectives over the following 18 months – and looking forward to new coorperation opportunities.

Your EMREX team

Field trial: Newsletter 2/5

For internal and external use

Field Trial is rolling on!!
– do you want to be a forerunner in the digitalization of the transfer of study record?

Field trial

EMREX has entered the Field Trial tage in which the solution for electronic transfer of study records is tested by students. As f March 2016 students in Norway and Sweden have been testing the model between the two countries and Finland has recently joined the field trial with Finnish students fetching their study records first from Sweden. Italy is expected to join in a couple of weeks and Denmark after the summer.

The spring term is ending and students are currently pouring into their home institutions after finishing their studies abroad. This provides an excellent opportunity for you to take part in the EMREX field Trial and test the tool at your home institution. Feedback from users – students, administrators and coordinators – is key to identify key strenghts and areas for development of the EMREX solution. The more logins we get from students, the better the EMREX model will be!

We offer you an opportunity to have your say about the electronic transfer of study records and to be the forerunner in the digitalization of the recognition process in Europe – and beyond. If you are interested in participating in the field trial, please contact your national contact person:

• Anders Bøgebjerg Hansen (abh@ufm.dk), Denmark
• Jonna Korhonen (jonna.korhonen@csc.fi), Finland
• Stefano Russo (strusso@kion.it), Italy
• Agnethe Sidselrud (agnethe.sidselrud@fsat.no), Norway
• Pamela Engström (pamela.engstrom@gu.se), Sweden

More information about the Field Trial can be found at emrex.eu

Survey ongoing about the recognition process

To gauge the effectiveness and value of EMREX for the recognition process, an online survey is currently being undertaken. The survey asks about the recognition process and how the transfer of credits taken abroad goes after returning to the institution. The results will help to pin down whether or not students are satisfied with their recognition process and to explore potential benefits of digitalization of the process.

The survey has been sent to all exchange students in participating EMREX-countries and is open until early 2017. the first peek into the preliminary results reveals that 53% of the survey respondents did not get their transcript of records before leaving the host institution and a clear majority would be willing to use the EMREX solution if it was available to ease and speed up the process. A final report on the survey will be available at the end of the project in 2017.

Should you not be able to participate in testing the EMREX solution, you can nevertheless still contribute to the project and help us to collect feedback and experiences of your students who have studied abroad regarding their recognition process. We invite you to spread the link to the survey widely at your institutions via different channels (website, tiwtter, email, facebook, etc.).

The survey is hosted on a server of the University of Warsaw and can be accessed via the following link: https://ankieter.mimuw.edu.pl/en/surveys/81/ . If you wish, you can rename the link.

The Word version of the questionnare is available here: long survey questionnaire.docx

If you have any questions about the survey please contact:
Tomasz Zając (t.zajac@uw.edu.pl), Poland

Information material and support

The EMREX-project is providing information material to participating institutions. Most material is found at emrex.eu, for more specific and/or technical material, please contact the project leader for IT development Geir Magne Vangen (g.m.vangen@fsat.no) or the project manager Mats Lindstedt (mats.lindstedt@csc.fi).

During the Field Trial a generic support address is provided: emrex-support@77.104.135.218

Field Trial up and running!

The field trial is our first major input on how the tool performs and how students use it. The live trial will test the hypothesis that the new functionality will ease the burden of administrative tasks laid up students adn reduce involvement of the administration.

As of March 2016 Norway and Sweden have entered the Field Trial stage of the EMREX-project and students have started testing the technical solution. The delayed start date was due to technival and legal issues that the project could not forsee. In this newsletter we have compiled the most important information and updates about the live Field Trial. Follow up newsletters will be distributed during the whole Field Trial process.

The Field Trial will be monitored by performing regular compilation of log-ins to the EMREX-tool per country and evaluating the student experience by using the built in EMREX survey tool. For students to be able to participate in the trial, the student needs to have a valid student account both in the home country and the host country.

The live going Field Trial of EMREX will run from present date to March 2017. All collected data from the surveys will then be put together, thus evaluating the solution. The following partners of the EMREX project are included in the trial: Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway and Sweden. For a list of participating institutions in each country, please see the Trial and Testing pages in wiki.

Field Trial set up and strategies

Each participating country is performing the Field Trial with different student recruiting strategies. This will affect the number of students involved in the EMREX-project from start. The trial strategies also include a description of how the testing will be performed. It describes how the startup of student testing will take place and how to invite and include students during the whole Field Trial. The strategy assumes both a functioning NCP and SMP. For this Field Trial strategy focus will lay on how the SMP in each country will be put to test by students.

Norway
The testing will start with some HEIs that attended the international EMREX kick-off seminar in October. The dataflow between the NCPs and SMP and the Norwegian SIS is tested in a controlled way by students and administrators in Norway and at host institutions (this phase will take ca. 2 to 4 weeks) After this, all Norwegian students and all Norwegian HEIs will have access to the EMREX-functionality via self explanatory link “import results from abroad” in the national self-service portal for students studying at Norwegian HEIs and in the national SIS. FSAT will not actively advertise for the EMREX-functionality for the next period of 4 to 8 weeks. After this period, FSAT and HEIs will evaluate the results and, if necessary change the testing strategy.

Sweden
The testing will start with small groups of students invited from chosen HEIs connected to the project. Project members in Sweden (Ladok and ITS, in cooperation with local international coordinators) will arrange tests with students for trouble shooting. The testing will be up-scaled during Field Trial.

Finland
A set of HEIs have been selected for testing (SMP part) and contacts persons agreed with them. The contact person will make sure the students are informed what to do and when. For the smaller HEIS all mobile students to EMREX countries will participate. For bigger HEIs only one faculty will be involved. With this we ensure that the number of students stays manageable.

Italy
We have two Universities participating in the Field Trials. We’ll gather information about the students in mobility to/ from the other partners countries. Once we have this information we will share them with the international coordinators and they will contact as many students as possible for participation in the Field Trial.

More information about each participating countries participation and strategies.

What could go wrong when the students access the system?

Below is a list of possible pitfalls:

• The student cannot access the SMP
• The SMP is not working properly or cannot find the right NCP
• The NCP is not working properly or not returning any achievement data
• The results are not transferred back to the HEI
• The questionnaire is not working properly

For troubleshooting the above cases (emrex.eu)

Field Trial and evaluation process

1. The field trial starts in March 2016, and is estimated to conclude by March 2017
2 Students transfer the results and evaluate the solution
3. Evaluation of the solution and its impact on enabling mobility

During 2016 we willl involve Nordplus, Nordlys, ERASMUS+ and other interested parties in the project by extending the information they receive from us, inlcuding information about the Field Trial and its progress. They will also recieve an evaluation survey for all the sutdens to participate in. Foloowing the end of the Field Trial, in 2017, the project will compile and publish the full statistics of use and evaluation as well as a final report.

you can find more information about the research plan and the long- and short survey (including a link to the long survey questionnaire) in wiki.

Information material and support

The EMREX- project is providing information material to participating institutions. Most material is found at the emrex.eu website. Some more specific and/or technical material is found in the wiki.

During the Field Trial a generic support address is provided: emrex-support@77.104.135.218

The national contact persons for the field trial are:

• Anders Bøgebjer Hansen, Denmark
• Jonna Korhonen Finland
• Stefano Russo, Italy
• Agnethe Sidselrud, Norway
• Pamela Enström, Sweden

As of March 2016 Norway and Sweden have entered the Field Trial stage of the EMREX-project and students are invited to test the technical solution. In this newsletter we have compiled the most important information and updates about the live Field Trial. Follow up newsletters will be distributed during the whole Field Trial process.”.