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A follow-up project to Erasmus Without Paper (EWP) has been approved for funding by the European Commission. Erasmus without Paper 2.0 is a follow-up to EWP, which started in 2015 and ended in October 2017. The project will run for two years, starting in January 2018. It was submitted under Erasmus+, KA3, Forward-Looking Cooperation Projects.
The basic aim of the project remains the setting up of an electronic network that enables Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to exchange information about Erasmus+ students and their mobilities electronically in real time; said infrastructure will cater to both HEIs or vendors beyond those included in the project consortium. The network will continue to be developed, fine-tuned and tested prior to its public launch at the end of 2018. It introduces some major developments compared to the first project.
The project will be coordinated by GDN signatory European University Foundation (EUF). The partners of the present project have been supplemented with GDN signatory University of Málaga from Spain, Cnous from France, and QS Unisolution (MoveOn) from Germany.
In addition to the EWP network, another key deliverable has been added: the EWP Hub. The Hub will connect publicly available and open-source software for HEIs who lack the sophisticated ICT software required to take advantage of the EWP network, thus ensuring a level playing field with regards to digital exchanges of information in the future. To start with, the EWP Hub will bring together the functionality of the Online Learning Agreement project (OLA), Egracons (Grade Conversion), European Student Card and a utility to manage Erasmus+ Inter-institutional agreements. It will be investigated how the EWP Hub can additionally connect various server-based services that have been developed in existing and future European projects, and in this way become community driven.
One of the main aims of the project is also the development of a competence centre, where documentation, detailed use cases, code examples and software libraries will be elaborated, and guidance and training for developers, policymakers, (commercial) software and service providers, users and other stakeholders produced. The competence centre will also provide practical guidance for those who want to implement the EWP APIs.
A business integration process will begin for the partners who have already implemented the present APIs, and the systems will also be tested with real data. We also aim to develop a common European EWP data format that will be compatible with the ELMO data format and other standards, eg. in the US. Connection to the Mobility Tool will also be worked out. A final objective is the integration of eID (EIDAS) in EWP.
The full launch of the EWP network will take place at the end of 2018, and afterwards a roll-out all over Europe will be started. It is our aim to consolidate EWP's role as the main European data transfer solution by 2020, in time for the successor of the Erasmus+ programme. Ultimately, EWP should be able to provide access to all kinds of service providers who deal with student data portability by specifying and implementing additional APIs, and maintaining and updating the standards that are needed to keep EWP viable.
Learn more at ErasmusWithoutPaper.eu, as well as in their latest newsletter, which covers:
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