This is a higher education student and staff mobility project, please consult the website of the organisation to obtain additional details.

"In the academic year 2016 - 2017, 12 students of Università Guglielmo Marconi took part in the Erasmus project. We counted 6 students mobilities for study and 6 mobilities for traineeship. Moreover we had 2 incoming students from Spain, Universidad de Oviedo, in the faculty of Civil Engineering and 4 STT mobilities, one of which was carried out during two distinguished periods. The main elements we considered for a successful mobility were motivation and foreign language proficiency. Students applying for a traineeship abroad were interviewed by our International Admissions Office Staff to check their language level. The interview was also useful to assess the motivation of candidates to carry out the mobility. As in the last years, we signed new agreements with enterprises and institutions abroad. As far as study mobility, the submitted students' applications were analyzed according to the basic requirements and the matching between ECTS and marks awarded. All the information concerning students' mobility were available on the university website and included in the official call published one or twice a year. Concerning outgoing students, most of them were hosted by Universidad de Oviedo (Asturias, Spain), where the institute ""Casa de las lenguas"" hold Spanish language courses for Erasmus incoming students. Most of our students, whose ""first foreign language"" was usually English, reached a so high level of Spanish language proficiency that they could finally say they knew one more language. One mobility was spent at Paris Sorbonne University in the framework of the new agreement we signed in 2016. SMP mobilities were carried out in different European enterprises' branches. Learning Agreement for studies and Learning Agreement for Traineeship were duly filled in, signed and submitted in compliance with the hosting institutions' deadlines. The Online Linguistic Support service allowed students who had no foreign language certificates to apply by submitting the first assessment result of OLS to the receiving institution. With reference to traineeship mobility, students themselves had the chance to propose a company where spending their mobility period. Trainees were hosted by important European companies, such as: Camera di Commercio Italiana di Monaco (Germania), Universidad Poltitecnica de Madrid - Oficina Internacional (Spain), Inventya (Manchester - UK), UNICEF (Bratislava - Slovakia), Underwriters Laboratoires (Spain).The 4 incoming staff mobilities contributed to increase the cooperation among our institutions. One person came from Leeds (UK) to talk about the open distance learning methodology,one from Madrid and two from Wien visited us to discuss about further collaborations and take part in the Career Day."

"For the first time the project duration has been two years. The numbers revealed a constant trend with no particular discrepancies in terms of numbers with respect to the last years. New bilateral agreements have been signed: with the University of Silesia in Katowice - faculty of Political and Social Science, TV and journalism, with English as language of instruction; University of Ljublja (with Spanish as main language of instruction), faculty of languages, philology and literature. Two outgoing mobilities for study have been extended till the end of the spring semester in the field of Education Science/Teaching and Training at the Universidad de Oviedo (Spain). Then, listed as follows: 1 mobility at the Technikum Wien (Austria), faculty of Computer Engineering; 1 student attended the Civil Engineering studies at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid; 1 mobility - Universidad de Oviedo - was aimed at studying and carrying out researches for the final thesis development. The applications were examined according to the main suitability requirements, as they are described in the call which is published in the university website. The Erasmus office considers the foreign language competence required to students and provides information regarding the nomination and the application procedures to be submitted to the hosting institutions. As far as placement is concerned, students who apply are contacted by the Erasmus office and asked the documents certifying the suitability requirements, first of all their linguistic competence. Students are convened by the university for an interview aimed at evaluating their motivation and linguistic competence, to verify the minimum requirements in order to carry out a traineeship abroad. Students considered suitable are sent a list of enterprises searching for profiles in line with theirs and enterprises are sent the candidates' CV. Hosting institutions/enetrprises may ask students to hold a second interview. Alternatively, students can propose their university an enetrprise's contact which they already submitted their application to; in this regard the Erasmus office approves the application by receiving an acceptance letter submitted by the hosting institution. Students are granted the access to the OLS (Online Linguistic Support) portal, which allows them to interface with an useful linguistic competence's assessment tool. Students should do two language tests: the first one at the beginning of the mobility period and a second and last one at the end of it. They can also enter the language course which is free and user friendly. The foreign language is chosen according to the country students go to. The OLS portal has been very useful in particular for the student mobility for study, because trainees are requested to have a high language competence at the moment when they apply. As far as traineeship mobilities are concerned, the framework has been very interesting and varied: a student left for the third time, after spending two previous mobilities, one for study and another one for traineeship. Enrolled in the bachelor's degree of Modern Languages, he spent his traineeship at the Underwriters Laboratoires (Barcelona) for the second time, after the previous successful experience. Two students enrolled in the master's degree of Modern Languages spent their Erasmus mobility in: Translit, an enterprise in Cork and Limerik (Ireland) and another student in the Italian embassy in Liverpool (UK). A master's degree student in Philology worked as Italian teacher in the school ""Asociacion Parla Italiano"" in Madrid. During the second semester (spring 2017 - 2018 ) a student enrolled in the faculty of Business worked in the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Budapest; a Civil Engineering trainee worked in Salonicco (Greece) in the famous Ansaldo, collaborating for t underground. Another student enrolled in Political Science worked at the ""Gender Research Formation"", in Sofia (Bulgary), which is a company working for the human rights equality and gender equal opportunities. As far as staff is concerned, we encountered an outgoing mobility aimed at taking part in the International staff week, held at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, where the overspreading of good practises, universities strategies and objectives to create programs and projects in mutual collaboration have been discussed."

In respect to last academic year, during which the Erasmus project had been planned for the II semester, in the academic year 2015 – 2016 our students’ mobilities covered the whole academic year. Being an online, open university we’ve been having a larger number of students workers, but in the course of the last three years students’ average age decreased leading to a higher number of applications and mobilities effectively carried out. In respect to the previous years, students and staff mobilities have been carried out in a larger and more various framework. According to our internationalization strategy, illustrated in the Erasmus Policy Statement 2014 – 2020, our main purposes are: the increase of high quality international master students, the setting of international and English taught programmes, the support to promoters of international, cooperation agreements, for the implementation of both student and staff mobility. In this academic year we had 29 mobilities: 23 students and 6 staff mobilities for training. 9 SMS: in the first semester 5 students in Spain (Oviedo and Madrid), 1 student in Paris (France) and in the second semester 3 students in Spain (Oviedo and Madrid).14 SMP: in the first semester 3 students in Spain, 2 in Greece, 1 in Sweden and in the second semester 6 students in Spain (Barcelona and Madrid), 1 in Sweden, 1 in Greece.6 STA, staff mobility for training.INCOMING: 2 students from Oviedo (Spain) and 3 staff from UDIMA – Universidad a distancia de Madrid (Spain).Our activities are structured in different phases (preparation, implementation and follow up) for supporting students before, during and after their mobilities, starting from the Erasmus call for students applications that is published in our university website and the newsletter that is sent to students. We periodically arrange Open Days aimed to the Erasmus project promotion. Students applications are considered and evaluated, then selected according to suitability, credit and merit standards. At the same time the Erasmus office guarantees its support to students by providing them with all the necessary information about the hosting institutions, such as activities and exams calendar, academic offer, language courses, useful documents to be prepared before, during and after the mobility and deadlines for applying in the foreign institution. Students are also materially provided with all the useful papers such as LA and Erasmus Charter for Higher Education and they are helped in the choice of the exams to be indicated in their Learning Agreement for study, in order to be guaranteed about the future recognition of credits awarded abroad and illustrated in the Transcript of Records. Support to students is carried out by the Erasmus students coordinator through email exchanges, phone calls, face to face and in collaboration with the office in charge of approving and recognizing the awarded credits. Before the mobility, students are sent the OLS assessment and according to the students requests they receive the access to the online language course. The final grant percentage is payed to students since they do the final OLS language test and bring to the Erasmus office all the necessary final documentation (Transcript of Records and student mobility certificate) on their return to Italy. Regarding the incoming mobilities, we receive the applications from students making sure they are sent respecting our predicted deadlines. We provide any further information on our university academic offer and about the calendar of our activities, in addition to any explanation provided in our institutional website. Even if our institution is an open, online university we arrange face to face meeting between students and professors and classes. At the end of the path, we release the required documents, such as the final mobility certificate and the Transcript of Records. Regarding the staff mobility we plan an agenda for meeting, for carrying out workshop and visits to our university buildings: exam offices, multimedia and didactic production laboratories. Our project has globally improved from both a quantitative and qualitative point of view, because of the increase of European universities with whom we signed new bilateral agreements for students and staff mobilities. At the same time the number of enterprises hosting our students for traineeship increased too, contributing to enlarge more and more the global framework of partner institutions as well as the opportunities for our students to make such an important experience. We had many requests of mobility extending period, globally corresponding to the 40% on the total amount of mobilities and often requested by the hosting enterprises themselves.

This is a higher education student and staff mobility project, please consult the website of the organisation to obtain additional details.