Core pieces in Erasmus+ management

The processes of nominating students and issuing a transcript of records are part of the Erasmus+ student mobility administration cycle.

What are these steps concretely, and why is the Erasmus Without Paper initiative working to help higher education institutions digitalise them?

Nominations

A nomination refers to the process where a sending higher education institution communicates with a receiving partner institution about students they want to send on a mobility. They "nominate" the student(s) for available "mobility spot(s)" in accordance with the inter-institutional agreement the institutions have put together.

Digital nominations: a highly anticipated feature

Today the nomination process is fragmented and varied between each higher education institution. Erasmus Without Paper can significantly streamline and simplify these nominations.

Once used at scale, higher education institutions will be able to share nominations of their selected students seamlessly from their system with the receiving institutions via Erasmus Without Paper. This means institutions will no longer need to manage multiple processes and tools to exchange student nominations with their partners.

Current status

Today, almost 2,800 higher education institutions already have access to an early release digital nomination functionality. Since last year some have started experimenting with it.

The new mandatory business requirements will introduce some changes to the existing technical specification as a result of the community consultation. The biggest modification compared to the current functionality as described in the technical specifications will be the separation of nominations and incoming applications.

Transcript of records

This transcript is issued by the receiving institution at the end of the student mobility period. It is shared with the sending institution to facilitate automatic recognition.

The transcript of records provides an overview of the learning outcomes of the student at the receiving institution, including the educational components, number of ECTS credits completed, and the grades awarded.

Digital transcripts of records: a complex landscape

Exchanging transcripts of records via Erasmus Without Paper presents a more complex challenge than nominations. Often, the system used for transcripts differs from the one managing mobility. Consequently, the adoption rate for digital transcripts may take longer than for digital nominations.

With mandatory business requirements now finalised, we have reached a critical first step for the higher education community to see implementation options and reflect on them within their institutions.

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Get the new mandatory business requirements

Community-created

The business requirements for these steps were co-created by the BPO-SEG members with input from the community via a wide consultation through the EWP user groups.

The EWP Champions reviewed and confirmed the results, which helps to ensure they are aligned with the community’s needs.

Community input was particularly important because both processes are not underpinned by official Erasmus+ templates.

Towards large-scale adoption of digital nominations and transcripts of records 

The next steps are to translate the new requirements into technical specifications. In this step developers from in-house systems and third-party providers will be consulted at the Infrastructure Forum. Once the technical specification is updated, each system will need to adapt its implementation to the commonly agreed technical standards. At the same time international relations officers can reflect on a revision of the internal workflows when they become digital.

Stay informed

The user community will be kept informed about progress towards preparing all systems to exchange digital nominations and transcripts via Erasmus Without Paper on a voluntary basis.

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In terms of user adoption of digital mobility management processes, the priority in 2024 remains on having all institutions exchanging inter-institutional agreements and learning agreements via Erasmus Without Paper.