International Journal of applied mathematics and computer science

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Paper details

Number 1 - March 1993
Volume 3 - 1993

Student and staff mobility across Europe: From Erasmus to Tempus

Alberto J. Proença

Abstract
1794 inter-university cooperation programmes (ICPs) have been funded in 1991/92 under ERASMUS, (European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students, an European Community (EC) program. From these, 85 contracts lie in the main subject area of Engineering, Technology, Informatics or Computer Science, and 15 of them include both a student and a teaching staff mobility program among 3.9 countries on average. The Dep. of Informatics of University of Minho is leading an ERASMUS ICP since 1989 with 4 participating institutions from 2 countries (P and UK). One of the most important outcomes of this program has been the definition of a common core of subjects relevant to Computer Engineering. Also worth mentioning is the great success the integrated planning of the actions had among the Portuguese students moving to UK: the teaching staff mobility programme has been used in the past few years in the regular academic courses to provide the students the technical preparation for their final year project in the host university, and at the same time to allow them to evaluate the expected difficulties with the foreign language. In 1990 a Trans-European Mobility Scheme for University Studies (TEMPUS) was launched, and a Joint European Project (JEP) was submitted. The cooperating Universities included the partners of the current ERASMUS ICP and 2 Polish Institutions. Previous experience was crucial to the success of its running; namely, the type of relationship between UK and P in a high-tech field – a typical North-South approach under European standards – is extended now to new European countries, and lessons can be learnt from the ERASMUS.

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