The Learning Agreement: still essential? How to set up and measure quality abroad
Both the quality of Erasmus mobility and the recognition of credits remain returning topics when it comes to international credit mobility. There are several tools and initiatives that try to look into these matters. Some are older, like the Learning Agreement, some are younger, like recent mapping, benchmarking and quality assurance initiatives.
International cooperation, a matter of trust
The Learning Agreement has been around for quite some time now. It has been developed as an instrument to facilitate recognition of credits gained at the host institution. Many students have been using it for their Erasmus stay abroad. Both the content of the courses taken and the credits obtained are agreed upon. Nothing can go wrong, one would say, but in practice, things tend to be problematic on a regular basis. According to the European Students’ Union (ESU), “one of the mobility obstacles […] is an increase in the rigidity of curricula and learning paths, areas in which the Bologna Process was expected to bring greater flexibility and openness.”
So, it is not sufficient to only use the Learning Agreement for quality and recognition purposes. Other instruments are vital for a successful stay abroad. As the ESU states, the first priority of a programme should be to create enough opportunities for a student to arrange a period abroad. And, the curriculum must allow the credits to fit in. After all, an international experience without credits counting towards a grade would be more cultural than academic.
Another issue is quality. Of course, we all know that a decades-long relationship with a preferred partner is a guarantee for quality: the professors know each other and each other's work and administrative staff regularly meet on conferences to discuss housing and enrollment. Or is it not? Would it be a good thing if the positive gut feeling we all have on this, was turned into something more measureable?
EMQT-project
Well, it is exactly those things that the EMQT-project tries to develop. During a conference last April, intermediate results were presented in Bologna. The project is working on an "Erasmus structural network", whose general aim is to identify good practices, benchmarking procedures and related indicators.
Examples of good practices are important, because they show others how to remove obstacles and firmly implement a stay abroad in the curriculum, for instance. One of the good things about this project is that it thoroughly involves the view of academics. Through several interviews, quite a large group of professors and teachers are asked about their ideas about quality and recognition. This will most likely provide valuable information.
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As for the Learning Agreement: it does not seem to impress very much. If a student returns with around 60-70 percent of the courses normally taken at home, now taken abroad, it is OK. Only one thing is really important when it comes to international cooperation: the confidence that the courses the student follows at the host university, completely fit into the home curriculum. No questions about quality or recognition. Trusting your counterpart is the only thing that really matters in a relationship. And, let's be honest, nothing new about that!
There are several interesting things about benchmarking and indicators, because of the importance of comparing yourself to others, and measuring your quality. Nuffic is responsible for a Dutch mapping initiative called Mapping Internationalization (MINT), set up two years ago. It provides institutions and programmes with the opportunity to determine the state of affairs of their internationalisation policy, in relation to the goals they have set and the activities they have undertaken. EMQT is developing a mapping tool based upon the same principles. Several indicators are used to measure the state of affairs of the quality of a short term stay at a partner university.
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So, on the one hand we have the good practices and measurements, supporting and facilitating relationships based on trust. On the other hand, we have the indicators that allow us to measure the effects of these measurements and their quality. Additionally, an agreement is made to ensure the correct use of the relationship.
What do you think, is such an agreement still necessary if everything else works fine? Or should we continue using it, because 'working fine' is something that's difficult to accomplish and it's not even enough in internationalisation?