Aiming to educate by promoting the academic dimension of Erasmus+ Erasmus Project

Project Title

Aiming to educate by promoting the academic dimension of Erasmus+

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development); International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation

Project Summary

AIMED stands for „Aiming to educate by promoting the academic dimension of Erasmus+” and is intended to contribute to the growth of significance of student exchange. The project AIMED was created to change the perception of Erasmus+ student mobility and promote the most valuable component of exchanges that is its academic dimension. The possibility to choose engaging and valuable subjects in a host university is important for students wishing to improve their academic experience. Consequently, little educational/professional value is often pointed as a reason for resignation from spending a period of studies in another institution. A high number of Erasmus+ agreements in many institutions makes it difficult for the student to make a mobility decision based purely on academic grounds. The offer of subjects for mobility candidates is often not easy to find and the information provided does not fully explore the content of the course. Also, a considerable number of students inscribed in specialistic programmes or with targeted interests find it difficult to choose a host university from the offer available in their institutions. Therefore, an idea for the project originated from the fact that the academic potential of mobility is not adequately explored and led to the formulation of the following objectives:
– facilitating access to the content of programmes and subjects offered for international exchange students by higher education institutions;
– putting the needs of students in the centre of attention during the platform development;
– providing the students with the tool enabling them to choose the courses that will impact their academic performance;
– removing barriers, as well as encouraging the focus on the quality of the mobility;
– giving visibility to quality education.

With the following objectives in mind the partners of AIMED project joined their forces to create an online platform providing an educational offer for international students presented in an attractive, friendly and comparable way. The platform contains subjects available at various higher education institutions helping the students to choose the direction of the mobility and prepare their study plan. It will help mobility candidates to investigate profoundly the educational offer and make an informed decision based on the academic grounds.
The issue has been recently raised whether students should have a say in courses’ content and if these should be adjusted to their requests. There is a risk of academic knowledge to drift towards commercialising and this definitely would not be a good direction. Nonetheless, courses should embrace students curiosity, hunger for knowledge, stimulate them to develop themselves in thinking and working effectively. The mobility should be considered as an investment for future life. By the provision of an innovative tool for HEIs to advertise their offer of subjects for international exchange students the partners of the project aim to contribute to the realisation of this goal.
The project was implemented according to the ADDIE methodology. The stages of this methodology were reflected in the organisation of work on intellectual outputs and each of them includes important milestones that are the indicators of progress. ADDIE includes five complementary stages: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation. The main result of the project is a platform where higher education institutions are able to promote their educational offer to potential foreign incoming students.
The elaboration of the main result was supported by the development of the following activities:
– organisation of focus group activities with the students (2 in each partner institution) based on the dedicated framework;
– summary reports of the partners from the focus group activities as the basis for the consolidated partners’ report;
– functional platform analysis that mapped the needs of the students for the purpose of platform development and helped define the functionalities of the tool;
– design of the platform transformed the objectives defined in analysis into a blueprint of the tool and finally into a prototype;
– development of the platform and preparation of the content of partner universities;
– evaluation of the platform and its content, based on the dedicated framework, by students, HEIs, as well as mobility candidates in partner institutions;
– publication of the Guidelines exploring the ways on how to use the platform for both, staff of higher education institutions, as well as their students. The Guidelines have a form of two manuals for students and staff and constitute a real support for HEIs that wish to join the platform.
The project aims to initiate a substantial change in the way the student mobility is perceived in Europe and bring it to a new level that promotes the academic dimension of the exchange. Consequently, the project contributes to improving the prestige of the Erasmus+ programme.

Project Website

http://aimed.university

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 263534,07 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIWERSYTET LODZKI & Country: PL

Project Partners

• UNIVERSIDAD DE GRANADA
• UNIVERSIDAD DE CADIZ
• ERASMUS STUDENT NETWORK AISBL
• VYTAUTO DIDZIOJO UNIVERSITETAS
• EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION-CAMPUS EUROPAE
• UNIVERZA NA PRIMORSKEM UNIVERSITA DEL LITORALE
• VIESOJI ISTAIGA EUROPOS HUMANITARINIS UNIVERSITETAS