Making Erasmus Without Paper a reality: interviews with EWP Champions in Lund

The Erasmus Without Paper network, part of the European Student Card Initiative, is a prime example of European cooperation. A multi-stakeholder collaboration aiming to digitalise and simplify administrative procedures for higher education institutions and students.

Institutions participating in the Erasmus+ Programme play a crucial role in this digital transformation by using the Erasmus Without Paper network, via the EWP Dashboard, their in-house system or a third-party system, to exchange necessary data with their partner institutions.

The European Commission and EWP+ project managers are committed to provide further support for institutions to digitalise Erasmus+ processes. As part of this support, we are highlighting success stories from EWP Champions in order for other institutions to learn about good practice and solutions that could help them.

Today, we are visiting Lund University in Sweden, which is connected to the Erasmus Without Paper network for both inter-institutional agreements (IIA) and online learning agreements (LA) via SoleMove. We are meeting with Martin Charlier who is Project manager at Student Experience and Mobility.

State of play

Is your institution approving inter-institutional agreements via Erasmus Without Paper?

Martin: For the past year, we have been exchanging both learning agreements and inter-institutional agreements. The mobility process is decentralised in Lund. I have a full overview of what happens and needs to be done by the faculties, but it is their initiative to renew and initiate agreements. It did start out slow. Luckily, the School of Economics and Management (LUSEM), which accounts for 30 percent of our mobilities, was really on the forefront of using the Erasmus Without Paper network. Their new Erasmus coordinator took a full week to focus on renewals.

Is your institution approving learning agreements via Erasmus?

Martin: I was expecting more issues with learning agreements compared to inter-institutional agreements, but we see the exact opposite across the community. For learning agreements, things have been running very smooth since the start. Our system, SoleMove, sends out notifications when a learning agreement is not signed. This has the effect that faculties set up their accounts and made sure they were ready to process and initiate learning agreements.

How well informed do you feel the staff of your institution is about Erasmus Without Paper?

Martin: I try to provide as much information and support to the faculties as I can. We notify them which inter-institutional agreements can be renewed via Erasmus Without Paper. In general, people are aware of the Erasmus Without Paper project, and they know where they can get information and support. But without a figurative stick, from the university or the Commission (by setting a hard deadline), I can only remind them to renew their inter-institutional agreements via Erasmus Without Paper as soon as possible.

All things aside, I am fairly confident we will have all inter-institutional agreements renewed using Erasmus Without Paper, sooner rather than later. Swedish people tend to follow rules, so we should be good in that regard (laughs).

Success factors and experiences

What was the biggest challenge for establishing your Erasmus Without Paper connection? How did you overcome it?

Martin: I do not think a lack of communication or information is the biggest challenge, like some institutions like to claim. There is a lot of content available on all aspects of Erasmus Without Paper project, it is a question of effort and priorities from the university management rather than availability.

The biggest challenge is that you need two to tango. Meaning, if your partner is not ready, it does not matter that your system works perfectly. That can be frustrating from time to time. Technical issues you can report, but if there is a lack of knowledge or willingness on your partner’s side, you are stuck as well.

What were some of the success factors that supported the implementation at Lund University?

Martin: I think what really helped was getting on board with the project from the beginning. We tried to play an active role in the development of Erasmus Without Paper and our system. Lund university is also the biggest client of Solenovo (the company behind SoleMove). This resulted in us being able to influence the way they developed SoleMove, highlighting potential issues beforehand.

The faculties that started a year ago are now less dependent on me for information. They can explain to partners what they need to do or how to circumvent certain roadblocks. The downside of starting early is that they got to enjoy the emotional rollercoaster together with the rest of us (laughs).

Do you have tips for your colleagues on how they can better benefit from Erasmus Without Paper?

Martin: Do not lose hope…(laughs). But more importantly, do not hesitate to ask questions or support. From your partners, from your providers, via the Slack forum, which I think is very underused by international relations officers.

I see sometimes from partners that there are some misunderstandings about core concepts of the processes, such as the difference between signing and approving. These are things that can be resolved by asking questions.

Vision on digitisation

Why do you think it is important to connect to the Erasmus Without Paper network for the university?

Martin: Many of my predecessors and colleagues spent way too much time filling in forms and trying to understand the systems used by partners. Digitising administrative processes is the way of the future, even if we are going through a phase of recreating or adding issues for the time being. On the other hand, we should not be overly optimistic about it, because IT does not solve all of our daily problems. Often, the issues were not of a technical nature, so they are not going to be solved with a technical solution.

There is also the size conundrum. A smaller university was perfectly happy with managing everything in an Excel file. Something like that is not feasible for the amount of mobility we experience in Lund. Having a digital solution to manage all mobilities is a game changer for us. It was better to spend more time from the beginning, with trial and error, than go back to a (temporary) paper-based solution.

Digitising administrative processes is the way of the future, even if you have to go through a phase of initial struggles.

What new priorities do you feel Erasmus Without Paper should tackle in the future?

Martin: Many colleagues feared that the Erasmus app would result in double work. We communicate to all our students, regardless of the destination for their mobility. The inclusion of other types of mobilities is something that is probably in the future. Thinking of a way to integrate internships would also be really helpful, but that is a lot harder to integrate organisations outside of higher education, like NGOs and private sector.

What factors would make Erasmus Without Paper impact even more positively on students?

Martin: The learning agreement is of course the one document that students already have to deal with today, and the smoother this document will be integrated, and its functionalities enhanced, the better. But this is a job that relies as much on the providers’/developers’ shoulders than on Erasmus Without Paper, if not more.

Further on, I can think of a current API that is completely under used, is the Fact Sheet API. In SoleMove, fact sheet information is fetched from our partners’ systems and accessible to our outgoing students. This makes the information displearning agreementyed more reliable as it comes from our partners.