Model Credit Recognition Agreement Open Peer Review
The main aim of the ECCOE project is to facilitate the endorsement and appropriation of open, online and flexible higher education. In support of this overarching objective, the project aims to increase trust in technology-enabled credentials among students, higher education institutions (HEIs) and employers.
The Model Credit Recognition Agreement (MCRA, henceforth) is being designed as a way to explicitly capture, in an explicit and standardized manner, the details of any cross-institutional recognition agreements. To make the generation of MCRAs easier, an online tool has been developed.
In order to validate a beta version of the MCRA tool, an open peer review process is being undertaken in collaboration with established experts, with relevant experience in different aspects of (virtual) mobility recognition processes.
The final version (tool+documentation) resulting from this open peer review will be validated by the relevant legal departments of the Higher Education Institution partners (DHBW in Germany, METID in Italia, UNED in Spain, and VMU in Lithuania) before translation into the 6 partner languages (FR, ES, DE, IT, LT and NL).
You can watch this demonstration video with the steps for this review and a description of how the tool works.
Steps for the review
1. Before trying to use the tool, you need to register on the ECCOE web (if you haven’t done so already):
a. To register, use this link: https://eccoe.eu/registration/
b. Note that the Website must be a complete address starting with http://www.
c. Once registered you should receive two emails:
– One with the subject “Welcome to your new Group” that is just informative.
– One with the subject “Your Registration is Pending Approval”, with a link confirm the registration and to activate your account. Please, check that this email is not in your Spam. Until you have done this you will not be able to use the MCRA tool.
If you have activated your account correctly, you should receive a third email with the subject “User Account Activated”.
If you didn’t receive the second email, your account will not be activated and your user/password will not work. In this case, please contact us (bsedano@invi.uned.es) in order to activate your account and that you can access.
d. When you click on the link in the email it will take you to the login page where you can enter your username and password. If you are not redirected to this page use the following link: https://eccoe.eu/login/ (this is also the link to login).
e. To confirm that you are logged in, check the top right part of the browser window, that should have a link to your profile information and be labelled: Howdy, <>.
2. To get an idea of how to use the tool please read the User Guide available on the tool frontpage (https://eccoe.eu/outputs/io2/mcra_fp).
3. Once familiar with the tool and its use, please try to use it to develop a “fictional” agreement with another HEI, following the steps proposed on the tool frontpage “Add the data about your institution for the MCRA” and “Prepare your MCRA”.
4. Finally, after completion, please record your experience of using the tool in the questionnaire below, together with any suggestions for improvement.
This open peer review ran from December 2 until February 1st, 2021.
