Abstract:

Student exchange programs such as Erasmus require, to be effective, the transfer of credits from a foreign university to the home university. In order to meet all formal requirements, the rules and regulations of both universities must be matched at the legal, scientific and content levels. The latter two can be intentionally different in order to broaden the horizons of the students. The legal and organizational levels, on the other hand, cause a lot of manual work in the process of formal recognition.
This process is difficult because there is not yet any standardized or generalized way of describing the formal structure of curricula. A solution to this problem -- ideally based on automatic, software-based suggestions -- would enable us to identify similar parts in study programs and their functional role in the curriculum, and also offer “the big picture” at one glance.

This paper shows a first attempt to formally standardize international programs by modelling five BSc in Biology programs from different international universities. The modelling uses SemaLogic, a formal logical description language that was developed specifically to support the overall requirements of curricula. We also present a graphical representation that expresses the identical logical content of the rule set while being clear and easy to understand.

The comparison of the five programs gives the following result:
- The general structures follow either temporal (semesters / years) or thematic pathways. Several alternative models of the same program allow for the distinction between topic-based tracks and their embedding in the overall time structure.
- The degree of flexibility is directly visible through the number of options and their relationship within the general structure. The balance between obligatory elements, free choices, and dependent modules which require certain conditions is immediately apparent.
- The number of alternatives to earn learning credits can be easily estimated. Based on SemaLogic, they can actually be calculated and compared in histograms.

Additional advantages of the logical modelling language became apparent in places where the official documents contained logical errors or undefined relationships of program components, since all SemaLogic-based rules can be verified by a prototype program.

In summary, the formal design of curricula using a logical language such as SemaLogic would greatly enhance the effectiveness of exchange programs both for individual students, as they would be able to understand the requirements better and faster, and for university administrations, as they would be able to realize the formal recognition process with a fraction of the current efforts.

Keywords:

Curriculum Design, Semantic Language, Graphical Representation, International Study Programs, Erasmus Exchange, Student Mobility.