Finnish National Agency for Education promotes the mobility of students’ achievement records in the Nordic and Baltic countries

Using the EMREX service, achievement records can be transferred in a machine-readable format between higher education institutions and other data users nationally and cross borders. In Norway, for example, data transfers using EMREX are not limited to those between universities or other educational institutions. Students can transfer their data to potential employers when looking for a job, and such services as transferring professional licence data to construction sites or taxi licence data are being planned.

Data from the seven countries currently participating in the network are currently transferred to the EMREX service: Croatia, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Sweden, and the data are also used by many other stakeholders.

– Data transfers are needed to register study attainments based on recognition of prior learning between different higher education institutions, and these transfers are currently managed manually. The EMREX solution for electronic transfer of achievement records eliminates the need to handle printed documents and speeds up the recognition process, says Jukka Kohtanen, Development Manager at CSC - IT Center for Science.

In the future, students may be able to take their study records with them whenever it suits them and also access the records after their studies. The EMREX service already provides a good starting point for achieving this goal.

– As initiating transfers of achievement records from one higher education institution to another is controlled by the students themselves, separate agreements between the institutions or other actors are not needed for the actual data transfer, explains Kohtanen.

The Finnish National Agency for Education promotes the mobility of achievement records in the Nordic and Baltic countries as part of a project led by the Digital and Population Data Services Agency and funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers. The aim of the project is to find solutions and models for facilitating cross-border daily life through digitalisation and information exchanges.

– The goal of the Finnish National Agency for Education's work package, ‘Studying in another Nordic country or the Baltic region’, is to add descriptions of study records and degree data as well as secondary level study records to the EMREX service more extensively than at present. As the nature and scope of the descriptions are ambiguous, one of the tasks of the working group to be set up for the project will be shaping a common understanding of these matters. The goals also include attracting other participating countries of the work package to join the EMREX network, says Riikka Rissanen, Project Manager at the Finnish National Agency for Education.

Further information:

EMREX: CSC - IT Center for Science Ltd, Development Manager Jukka Kohtanen, firstname.lastname[at]csc.fi

Studying in another Nordic country or the Baltic region work package: Finnish National Board of Education, Project Manager Riikka Rissanen, firstname.lastname[at]oph.fi and Specialist Petteri Pulli, firstname.lastname[at]oph.fi