This session consists of a hands-on workshop.
Workshop Facilitators
Chair Riikka Rissanen, Finnish National Agency for Education, Finland
Speaker 1 Heidi Säävuori, University of Helsinki, Finland
Speaker 2 Line Gregersen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Harmonising operational processes behind student mobility – utopian dream or challenge accepted? #24
We have practices related to student mobility that already work excellently, and digitalisation helps to harmonise the processes and procedures. In this session we will get to map out whether there are common areas for improvement and discuss the findings. Participants are invited to reflect their own experience and perspective and contribute to discussion by a gallery walk.
The autonomy of universities must be respected, and it is protected by legislation in many ways. But are we ready to loosen the idea of institutional individualism when it comes to improving digital services for students in the context of cross-border interoperability, and developing also the administration accordingly? Are we ready to think outside our own campus and see how things look from the student’s perspective of local study administration processes, practices and decision making of studying?
We claim that in digital services for student mobility, we can resolve technical interoperability, we can change legislation, we can even agree semantics but there are many different local administrative processes which student must tackle, and there is a huge amount of variation. In addition, digitalisation is said to help to reduce administrative burden. Getting there also requires new digital administrative skills from both staff and students. In the long run, this has a lot to do with the change in ways of working and even the culture of higher education institutions.
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