Go back

Academic Exchange and Mobility

Working Group

Chair: Dorota Maciejowska

A graduate of the Jagiellonian University and the University of Economics in Krakow (postgraduate studies). Since January 2015, Head of the International Relations Office at the Jagiellonian University. Coordinates international cooperation and partnerships on university level with foreign higher education and research institutions, manages bilateral exchange programs and Erasmus + staff mobility, coordinates the SYLFF program, actively participates in several international and national science and education networks, including Coimbra Group, Utrecht Network, The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities, SYLFF Network and IROs Forum. In 2016, holder of the US State Department scholarship as part of the EducationUSA Leadership Institute. Author of publications and presentations at conferences and seminars in the field of internationalization of higher education and management of scientific and educational mobility of students, PhD candidates and academic staff.

Vice-Chair: Tiziana Gatti

A graduate of Political Sciences of the University of Siena. Since November 2004 international mobility officer in the International Relations Division of the University of Siena. Gained experience in internationalization of higher education and mobility programs also through participation in numerous international trainings, including Erasmus Staff Training Weeks in Nijmegen, Brussels, Dublin and London, as well as international internships and projects (Erasmus Mundus Eranet project  and Eranet Plus).

Focus of Working Group 

Taking into consideration the exceptional situation and its strong impact on mobility, the AEM WG is particularly obliged to revise number of activities to be realized in the upcoming future. Our focus will be to prevent students and staff from being discouraged from mobility but at the same time we have to bear in mind the new conditions for implementing this exchange. We should elaborate new form of promoting the mobility and we should think about formats of this mobility (including virtual mobility and blended mobility), as well as assuring the maximum possible of safety precautions to all mobile participants. We should also keep the track of “greener mobility” which can be a great solution especially in times when on one hand the sustainable development is urgent and on the other the prices of flight tickets can raise dramatically due to covid-19. The Eurail offer of promoting travels by trains in combination with the Erasmus+ programme can be the first stimulating step.

A university cannot exist without the continuous movement of scholarly ideas. At the core of academic life, a main facet of this movement is academic mobility. AEM Working Group is focused on international exchange and mobility of students and staff. With a wealth of challenges to respond to, the design and implementation of student and staff mobility require a collective, empathic and imaginative approach by participating institutions. The WG on one hand follows the EU policies, however its members consider them as driving force and try to introduce innovative approaches through their activities. Due to the variety of activities, the group, in order to be more effective, implements them in small focus groups. The main tasks of the AEM are:

  • to increase (currently to maintain previously reached) level of academic exchange (students, scholars and administrative staff) amongst Coimbra Group universities;
  • to empower the CG members’ capacity to keep collective cooperation with British universities and to share good practices in managing relationships during of Brexit;
  • to exchange experience among member institutions;
  • to develop joint projects aimed at improving quality of mobility, assuring safety and security in mobility as well as implementation of new schemes and tools supporting mobility;
  • to advise the Coimbra Group Executive Board on possible actions to be taken to influence the development of European educational programmes with mobility components, including virtual and blended mobility.

 

Recent highlights

All the following activities below have been successfully completed:

  • Revision and extension of the CG students’ exchange within the Student Exchange Network (SEN) scheme from the faculty to university- wide level with the aim of increasing the exchange quota and visibility as well as intensifying its’ monitoring.

 

  • Preparation and dissemination of the Guidebook for Coimbra Group Universities on Safety Protocols for Mobility, aiming at sharing and providing practical assistance to universities regarding establishment of safety protocols for mobility. Its’ continuation will be implemented in the UNISAFE Strategic Partnership Project.

 

  • Preparation to joint presentation of the AEM and Employability WG: Supporting students’ skills development for the labour market of the future during the Bologna Process 20th Anniversary to be held in Bologna on 24/25 June 2019. The presentation of the two Coimbra Group working groups.

 

  •  – Employability and Academic Exchange and Mobility – focuses on improving students’ employability and maximizing students’ study abroad experience by supporting students in identifying and verbalizing skills and competences developed during a stay abroad. Students’ skills development can play an increasingly important role on the globalizing labour market, which should be considered in the new perspective of the Erasmus Programme and new applications of the Bologna Process.

 

Current highlights refer to:

  • Preparation of the CG universities to the next academic year and continuation of students/staff mobility in 2020/2021. Sharing good practice, consideration of the development of the Student Exchange Network to virtual/blended form of mobility.
  • Preparation of CG universities to implementation of the Erasmus Without Paper module. Remarks to be addressed to the European Commission. Testing the online Learning Agreement between CG partners.
  • Promotion of mobility in new circumstances – new ways of assuring safe and efficient mobility in the upcoming years.
  • Benefiting from the CG project UNISAFE in better preparation to emergency situations.
  • Following the new EC projects schemes to develop joint activities favoring mobility between CG universities and its partners worldwide.

 

Ongoing/forthcoming activities:

  • Student Exchange Network. A large number of the member universities decided to participate in the Coimbra Group Student Exchange Network (SEN) which aims to promote and enhance an inner network exchange at all levels and academic disciplines. We aim at increasing the number of mobilities as well as inclusion of teaching staff mobility to CG Teaching Exchange Network (TEN) and creation of a tool to promote and monitor this activity.
    With regard to the current situation, we have to take in consideration new challenges which we will be facing. SEN should elaborate new approach to attract students and to be ready for various scenarios in mobility in the next academic year. The possibilities and problems will be discussed at the beginning of June 2020 during virtual meeting of the AEM.

 

  • Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange & Erasmus Without Paper (EWP). The purpose of participating of the AEM WG in these two initiatives is to implement and to convince more universities to join these EC projects and Open Source University Alliance (OSUA) repository, to get better knowledge on development of the project and on its’ implementation at all CG universities. Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange is a flagship programme established by the European Commission in 2018, with the goal to expand the reach and scope of the Erasmus+ Programme via Virtual Exchange (telecollaboration), that is: technology-enabled, sustained, people-to-people dialogues which use new media platforms  involving young people from Europe and the South Mediterranean. The EWP consortium is composed of public institutions, higher education organisations, software developers and student data repositories. They all share a vision in which HEIs will be able to exchange student data and therefore the documents that are based on them effortlessly in a fully electronic way. Open Source University Alliance is an initiative of several university networks that have joined forces for the successful roll out of a public repository of open source code and software. An alternative to working individually is for the HE community to share the source code of their applications, eliminating redundancy and letting their developers build on and adapt each other’s work. Currently all CG universities are testing the EWP module. We are collecting all important remarks and suggestions regarding functionality of the system and we plan to address it to the European Commission. CG partners declared to be ready to test the system by sending the virtual agreement between our universities.

 

  • Development of joint activities within the following areas of interest:
    • Development and full benefiting from the KA107 Erasmus+ Programme
    • Managing the quality of mobility
    • Innovation in mobility (in cooperation with other CG Working Groups)
    • Tools for implementation: quality surveys, recommendations, discussions/seminars, trainings, preparation of joint projects.
    • Stressing more virtual/blended mobility due to the situation
    • Mapping online courses among CG universities to make them accessible to CG students (together with the Education Innovation WG)
    • Preparation to the first pilot CG Joint Staff Training Week online

 

Contact person at the CG Office: Catarina Moleiro (moleiro@coimbra-group.eu)