Erasmus+ mobility for study

Recommendations for submitting your Learning Agreement proposal through AlmaRM

1. The Degree Programme asks you to carry out an amount of learning activities that allows you to achieve at least 4 CFU for mobilities lasting five months or less, and at least 8 CFU if you stay longer than 5 months.
2. When comparing the total of foreign credits (ECTS credits) and the corresponding Italian credits (CFU), the difference cannot be higher than 3.
   NB: 1 ECTS credit equals 1 CFU, i.e. 25 hours of study. It includes both lessons and other learning activities (in other words, credits do not depend just on the amount of class hours)!
3. You can include in your Learning Agreement single or multiple units from an Integrated Course (I.C.). Instead, partial recognition of credits from single course units is not allowed (e.g. you cannot take an integrative exam upon returning at UNIBO). Any activity included in the LA and approved, if confirmed by the Request for Recognition, will be registered fully in your UNIBO records, just as they appear on the LA/RR.
   PS: They will be registered in your career even if you didn’t initially include them in your StudentiOnline study plan!
4. Including UNIBO activities like Transferable skills (“Competenze trasversali”) in the Learning Agreement is not allowed.
5. In order to correctly fill in your Learning Agreement, and consequently obtain an accurate recognition of the activities carried out abroad upon returning, you need to create single groups of equivalence (“Gruppi di corrispondenza”) clicking on “Aggiungi Gruppo” (i.e. add group) for each pair or group of exams actually matching.
   In each group, the relation between UNIBO’s exams and the host University ones can be one to one, one to many, or many to one. The final proposal must make clear which activity/ies by the host University will substitute each UNIBO activity/ies. You can propose the substitution of learning activities belonging to any year of your degree programme, just be sure to comply with any mandatory exam sequence (“propedeuticità”) mentioned in your Degree Programme regulation.
6. When allowed upon agreement with the Partner University, you can include the final thesis preparation in the Learning Agreement. In such cases, you need to select “Thesis” (Tesi) and write the title or the topic.
   ● If you are a Bachelor’s students (First Cycle), the preparation of your final thesis abroad will not provide for the recognition of credits, and it cannot be the only activity you will carry out during your exchange.
   ● If you are a Master’s students (Second Cycle), you can benefit from the Erasmus+ scholarship even for the sole preparation of your final thesis (i.e. without carrying out any other learning activities). Contact us or your programme coordinator for information about the course code to insert in your Learning Agreement on AlmaRM. Upon returning, you will have to upload a document stating the actual carrying out of the thesis research, signed and stamped by the host University, instead of (or together with) your Transcript of Records.
7. In order to indicate the learning activities to substitute, on AlmaRM it is possible to:
   ~ select course units included in your degree programme study plan;
   ~ insert the code and credits of a course unit offered by another degree programme of the same level among those offered by UNIBO;
   ~ ask for the recognition of elective credits in the relevant SSD (scientific-disciplinary sector). For technical reasons, if those credits pertain to the same SSD, they must be included in the same group of equivalence. In such cases, when the foreign activity results in a grade, this will be converted and registered; if it results in a pass/fail, then it will be registered as such (“ID”).

The Learning Agreement is:
- SUBMITTED by the student on AlmaRM
- VALIDATED by the exchange referent teacher
- APPROVED by the Degree Programme Board – approval must occur before departure

Please refer to the UNIBO website for any other information.

We remind students who wish to amend a Learning Agreement that was approved already that it is possible to do so for a maximum of 2 times throughout the exchange period. Every change can involve multiple variations to the course units previously indicated.
We expect the first change to happen within 5 weeks from your arrival.

The process to amend your Learning Agreement follows the same path of the first submission (namely submission, validation and approval) and it is carried out exclusively through AlmaRM, even before departure if needed.

Please refer to the UNIBO website for any other information.

Recommendations for submitting your Request for Recognition of the learning activities carried out abroad through AlmaRM

1. If you receive the original copy of the certificate containing all the exams passed abroad (Transcript of Records) you should scan it and upload it on AlmaRM; competent offices will provide for its validation. In case the TOR arrives exclusively to administrative offices, we will provide on our own for its uploading and its concurrent validation. You need not to provide us a hard copy.
2.  You can ask for the recognition of single or multiple units from an Integrated Course (I.C.). The grade relative to the unit/s passed abroad will be converted, weighed and used to formulate the final grade of your I.C. directly through AlmaRM. If the Request for Recognition does not include all the units of an I.C., the final grade will be registered when the remaining units at the University of Bologna are also completed. Should the latter be your case, we suggest informing the teacher who is examining you for the remaining unit/s at the University of Bologna when you sit those units’ exams.
   Partial recognition of credits from single course units is not allowed (e.g. you cannot take an integrative exam upon returning at UNIBO). Any UNIBO activity included in the LA and approved, if confirmed by the Request for Recognition, will be registered fully in your UNIBO records, just as they appear on the RR.
3. When filling in the Request for Recognition, AlmaRM allows you to modify the groups of equivalence mentioned in the Learning Agreement. However, if you change formerly approved matches directly in the Request for Recognition, changes will be evaluated by the referent teacher and the Degree Programme Board at this stage without guarantee of approval.

The Request for Recognition is:
- SUBMITTED by the student on AlmaRM
- VALIDATED by the exchange referent teacher
- APPROVED by the Degree Programme Board

The referent teacher carries out grades conversion during the validation phase. The Degree Programme director can update or correct the conversion during the approval phase.
Grades conversion involves two steps: foreign grades are interpreted through the ECTS scale (A, B, C, D, E) and the resulting grades in ECTS scale are then transformed into Italian grades (out of 30). You can find the conversion table of foreign grades into ECTS ones on the host University Transcript of Records or on their website. The tables to convert ECTS grades into Italian ones are updated yearly and available at this link. 

Please refer to the UNIBO website for any other information.