Starting from the application period in the home university, the student is encouraged to think about the learning activities he or she will take at UCLouvain. Even if the initial proposal will often be subject to change, it is essential for the student to take charge of his or her own training programme. The objective is to have a list of learning activities at UCLouvain that fits within the study programme at the home university.
Here are the concepts and tools to help you draw up your individual study programme at UCLouvain:
ECTS Credits
ECTS credits are workload units to build your programme. They reflect the amount of work necessary to pass a particular learning activity (e.g. a course or a seminar) and are calculated taking into account the total time needed in order to achieve the desired learning outcomes, including the time spent in individual study.
Being a standard European measure, ECTS credits will make it easier for your studies at UCLouvain to be recognized by your home university.
A standard academic year is equivalent to 60 ECTS credits. Depending on how long you will stay at UCLouvain, you must therefore, in general, make up a programme of 30 credits (one semester) or 60 credits (two semesters). The exact number of credits you need to take is set by your home university, depending on your individual learning path. However, at UCLouvain you will be expected to make up a programme sufficiently close to the workload of a typical full-time academic semester or year.
Choosing courses
Choosing your courses and other learning activities must be done in close consultation with your academic tutor at the home university. Whether you are looking for equivalent or complementary courses, the overall objective should be the coherence of the study period at UCLouvain with the degree program at your home university.
All the courses available at UCLouvain are published on the website. Both the individual course descriptions as well as the details on Bachelor and Master degrees are available in French and English.
You can make your choice of program using the UCLouvain search engine.
However, you should pay careful attention to certain practical points listed in the course description, such as the year(s), the semester(s) and the language of instruction.
As soon as your application has been accepted by your home university, please do not hesitate to contact the UCLouvain faculty exchange coordinator for help and advice.
Learning Agreement
When your courses have been choosen a Learning agreement will be drawn up. This document lists the learning activities to be followed and the credits to be achieved upon satisfactory completion of the course assessments. In general, the learning agreement is first validated by your home university and then forwarded to the host faculty at UCLouvain. Agreed by all three parties, it is your guarantee that the activities which you complete satisfactorily during your stay at UCLouvain will be fully recognized by your home university.
The Learning agreement is the reference document for managing your programme; all exchange students are entitled to expect that it is signed before they leave for UCLouvain. Normally, the Learning agreement is put at your disposal by your home university. In particular, for countries participating to the Erasmus programme, the European model is mandatory.
Grades
UCLouvain uses a distribution table by faculty and by cycle. The table is constructed by taking the total number of successful grades obtained in all programs of each cycle and for each faculty during the last 5 academic years.
This distribution table is updated annually.
Institutional Co-ordinator for Erasmus and Student mobility : Prof. Dominique De Jaeger.
Contact:
M. Bart Stoffels
International Office
Place de l'Université 1,
B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve,
BELGIUM
► For any matter related to courses, ECTS credits and the Learning Agreement, students should contact the student exchange coordinator of their faculty.