Our view on the Erasmus without Paper Initiative

Una Europa has just published a position paper on the implementation of Erasmus Without Paper (EWP) in Higher Education Institutions, together with four other European University Alliances: UNITE!, ECIU University, EU-CONEXUS and EC2U. EWP is particularly important for European Universities in our objective to build a joint digital campus

Francesca Valente is the Chair of the cluster and in this interview she is telling us moreabout how the paper came about, the impact of EWP and the amazing work the cluster are doing to build the interconnected, freely accessible University of the Future.

Francesca, you join us today as Chair of the Una Europa Mobility Cluster. What made you decide to take on the position of Chair?

Within the 1Europe project Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna is the coordinator of the Work Package 4 (WP4), Joint innovative formats for mobility, aimed at increasing, innovating and enhancing mobility for students and staff within the Alliance. The implementation and evaluation of the activities of WP4 is supported by the Mobility Cluster, part of the project's Flexible Support Services. Because Università di Bologna is the leading university of WP4, the choice of a Bologna staff member chairing the cluster mobility was the natural choice.

When the proposal to take this position was received by the management of Università di Bologna's International Relations Office, I saw it as an excellent opportunity to put my long-standing expertise in the field towards the building of a European Campus, and to increase that expertise by being part of a group of experts working on the same field in other leading European universities.

The Mobility Cluster has been very busy since the 1Europe Project kicked off, providing support and advice on many topics.

What are the most important topics that the Mobility Cluster has been discussing in recent months?

The mobility cluster started its activities by reflecting on the definitions of different kinds of “mobility” (e.g. virtual, blended, long and short term) in order to give the Alliance some useful guidelines for the mobility paths needed to implement the educational formats foreseen both inside the project and beyond it. Then the pandemic emergency occurred. The mobility cluster has been crucial for the implementation of the virtual mobility in emergency project, aimed at offering our students mobility opportunities from home in the months of lockdown, when physical mobility was not allowed.

Beside these main activities, the Mobility Cluster has used its internal expertise to analyse the opportunities offered by the new Erasmus+ program 2021-27 as well as its challenges, as it has been for the EWP project. Another theme on the table has been cooperation with UK universities: having the University of Edinburgh as a partner, we can take advantage of their insight to overcome the difficulties related to the UK change of status with the Erasmus+ program.