Since ASEMME4, the ASEM Education Secretariat (AES) is tasked to update a Compendium on creating an interregional Credit Transfer Mechanisms and Learning Outcome Systems from ASEM partner countries. In order to support the project, an Expert Group (EG) has been set up in 2016 who met in March 2016 (Beijing, China), April 2017 (Ghent, Belgium), August 2017 (Bangkok, Thailand) and in June 2018 (Jakarta, Indonesia).
During the last EG meeting on June 1st in Jakarta, the Expert Group decided to launch a call for updating the Compendium on Credits and Learning Outcomes amongst ASEM countries and charged the AES to collect data via a new matrix of the Compendium. The new matrix is based on a reviewed set of indicators, to improve the usefulness of the existing compendium. The call for updating the information is actually ongoing and the AES hopes to receive the data at the latest end of October 2018.
Once the compendium matrix is collected from every ASEM partner country, the ASEM Education Secretariat will draft an online publication tool. This new tool should permit a quick and user-friendly mapping of credit transfer mechanisms of higher education systems in ASEM countries. The added value of the Compendium is its unique multilateral approach, sharing information on credit transfer mechanisms and learning outcome systems and taking into consideration the diversified realities in ASEM partner countries. The final goal is to offer information on the higher education system, quality assurance and credit transfer systems to facilitate cooperation and mobility between Europe and Asia.
The state of play of the data collection will be presented at SOM1 in Krems, Austria (16th – 17th October) and the next EG meeting will be held on November 20th in Cologne, Germany. Finally, the new online tool should be presented and shared to the ministers of all ASEM countries at ASEMME7 in Bucharest, Romania, in May 2019.