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This is a short overview of a WorkShop given to delegations from different Universities in October 2005 and july 2006, concerning the implementation of the European Credit Transfer System at Ghent University, more specifically about the Information Technology that was used by the Office for Student Administration and Study Programmes.
The European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System is a student-centred system based on the student workload required
to achieve the objectives of a programme, objectives preferably specified in terms of learning outcomes and competences
to be acquired.
(Source: Socrates Page
on ec.europa.eu)
ECTS makes study programmes easy to read and compare for all students, local and foreign. ECTS facilitates mobility and academic recognition. ECTS helps universities to organise and revise their study programmes. ECTS can be used across a variety of programmes and modes of delivery. ECTS makes European higher education more attractive for students from other continents.
When I talk about implementing ECTS, I always start with the three pillars of ECTS:
During this series of workshops at Ghent University, other people have talked or will talk about these different aspects of ECTS in much more detail, not necessarily in this order, and sometimes organized in a different way. Note that I am not an ECTS specialist, I am a software developer; my main concern is to know how to translate the concept of ECTS into an ICT application.
I was hired by Ghent University in 1998 and my first task was to redesign a series of software applications for the Office for Student Administration and Study Programmes. Let's go back into time and let's see how the architecture of those applications evolved.
