Erasmus without Paper is an EU funded project that aims to render the administrative workflow of Erasmus to a paperless system. The main aim of the project is to substitute as much as possible the paper trail required to enable the Erasmus experience and by extension all student exchanges, and replace it by electronic exchanges of data.
Every year more than 200,000 students from over 2000 higher education institutions (HEI) study abroad under the LLP flagship programme Erasmus. For each of these 200,000 students, several paper documents and information were sent back and forth between institutions. Although the majority of HEIs in Europe use software to handle mobility to transfer the locally stored data, the data is reproduced or printed on paper in order to send it to the partner institution where, because of the format, it needs to be submitted manually.
The project partners of Erasmus without paper (EWP) believe a lot of work in the context of international student mobility can be avoided by using technology. By replacing the huge paper-based workload by an electronic exchange of data, mobility can be managed more efficiently. In doing so, HEIs will be able to focus more on developing the quality of mobility and new initiatives rather than on coping with a great variety of administrative procedures. For the mobile students themselves, a lot of double administration will be abolished. For potential mobile students an obstacle to going on mobility will be tackled.
Further details on ERASMUS Without Paper available here.