The main aim of the project proposal is to provide tools and procedures in support of student mobility not only between PCs and EU but also between PC and PC across different regions.
Indeed in the last decade, there has been a continuous increase of number of students that choose to study abroad and a change in the traditional destinations towards English-speaking countries, such as the UK, the USA and Australia, underlining the growing global dimension of education. Not only EHEA is becoming attractive but other regions, as the Asia-Pacific region, have seen a sharp increase in the flow and exchange of students within the region’s boundaries and the development of several education hubs.
Thanks to the Erasmus Mundus Programme that complemented the existing cooperation within CBHE and previous TEMPUS, the mobility knew a strong acceleration so that Countries which were going to join the EHEA or just started to apply the Bologna principles, faced all the problems connected with recognition of credits and grades.
Within the EHEA, the implementation of ECTS (as credit accumulation and transfer), the fundamental shift from a teacher-centered to a learner-centered approach (SCL) and the use of learning outcomes and workload in curriculum design and delivery, as result of a long process and experimentation, increased the transparency and readability of the educational process and facilitated the learning mobility between institutions for short-term study periods (“credit mobility”) and put the basis for credit recognition. Nevertheless several students participating to EM projects experimented the same problems that EU students and institutions have afforded since the first stage of Erasmus mobility (and still existing): repetition of exams made abroad, unfair translation of grades, delay in career.

These problems, as for the EU HEIs, are due to
– the impossibility for credits and learning outcomes of a single educational component in two different programmes to be identical, even within an agreed national and international reference framework for credit allocation;
– the fact that educational systems have developed not only different national grading scales but also different ways of using them within the same country, different subject areas or institutions.
PAWER intends to exploit the strong experience of the partners in renovating curricula and organizing “structured” mobility within previous TEMPUS/CBHE and EMA2 projects, in order to establish in the 5 regions involved, a clear and transparent methodology for the recognition of credits and grades, as main tool for the identification and implementation of internationalization policies and strategies at national and institutional level.

The project proposal aims are:
– to harmonise the credit allocation and grading system in 5 study areas jointly developed in previous projects in 23 institutions from 8 countries belonging to 4 different regions, besides EU,
– to provide a reliable scheme for credit and grades transfer, on the basis of previous experiences of the partners in TEMPUS Programme in CA, Caucasus, Russia and Asia and EMA2 projects in the same regions, and of the new ECTS Guide and pilot project EGRACONS.

The main outcomes/outputs are:
-Data collection, that is information and data sharing on
•Framework of Qualifications, credit systems, level of application of ECTS system in the 13 (5EU and 8PC) countries;
•Recognition methodology used in each PC institution, within existing EMA2 projects;
•Training in EU of a staff pilot group and constitution of a permanent Local Team in each PC university;
-Preparation of a comparative scheme between local credit system and ECTS;
-Identification of 5 fields of study and •description of profiles, by general and specific LOs,
•allocation of ECTS to each Module,
•data collection on Students’ performances in the last 3 years,
•preparation of a synoptic scheme of grade systems and of a Manual for the correct transfer of grades.