REC-MAT Project

We do believe RECognition MATters and our main goal is promoting student exchange between Europe and Latin America. Get to know more about the project!

The main objective of the Rec-Mat (Recognition Matters) project, a Key Action 2 Capacity Building funded by the Erasmus+ programme, is to contribute to facilitate and promote student exchange between Europe and Latin America. To achieve this, it is crucial to reduce the barriers to mobility related to the process of academic recognition and enable Latin America Higher Education Institutions to implement a fairer academic recognition process.

Five European partners (Universidade do Porto, Universidad de Valladolid, Université de Lille, Universiteit Gent and the SGroup European Universities’ Network) and five institutions from Latin America (Universidade Estadual Paulista Julio de Mesquita Filho, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Universidade Federal do Rio Grand do Sul, Universidad Nacional del Sur and Universidad Nacional del Litoral) are leading the project.

Rec-Mat is based on the vast experience of partners in the Latin America region, and the challenges identified over time, in relation to different Educational Systems, principles, practices and tools to support of academic recognition. It brings proven innovation through its activities, linking the political and practical dimensions inherent to the recognition of academic training during student mobility (teaching staff training activities, piloting of case studies and policy debate activities).

Rec-Mat’s methodology is also original in the proposed target audiences and actors involved: not only the International Relations and Academic departments, but also professors (coordinators and programme directors), authorities identified as key decision makers in the process of recognition, as well as IT technical staff involved in developing support tools and information systems.

Through the project’s implementation, partners also intend to raise awareness among teaching staff for the importance of full academic recognition as well as for the relevance of Higher Education Institutions internationalisation, through a peer approach.

These objectives will be achieved through project activities, such as the Rec-Mat blended training with a physical and online component (MOOC), which aims to bring together Latin American professors (who are ‘resistant’ to the reality of international mobility and distant from the bologna rationale) with more experienced and ‘pro-internationalisation’ colleagues of its institutions, as well as of the European partners.