When you want to travel abroad to study, and when you look at the various universities' websites to get a general idea of their curricula and what they contain of materials that you know or do not know, there is no doubt that what has repeatedly caught your attention, ECTs. But perhaps you thought carefully about its meaning or that you did some research about what this system means even, but perhaps the large number of pages and words and the abundance of sites and opinions disturbed you, so we will give you in this article an overview of what this system is so follow us.
What is ECTs?
It is a system designed to facilitate the movement of students between different countries, and the fact that this system measures the educational achievements of students in addition to the workload, the student can transfer the points obtained from one university to another university with ease. In addition to the possibility of incorporating different types of education such as university education and work-based education.
Ects system 1
ECTs means the first letters of the following words: European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System, European credit transfer and accumulation system. This system aims to make educational programs and academic performance of students in the higher education stage more transparent, in addition to making it standardized across Europe, in addition to the local systems in different European countries. This system consists of two main components: the points of the system, the scale of assessment for the system.
ECTs Credits
When you succeed and finish a specific subject at a university, or even a lecture or something scientific, you will be awarded points for the system. Each point of this system represents a specified amount of workload. In general, one academic year is counted as 60 ECTs. Thus a three-year undergraduate undergraduate program usually has about 180 ECTs, while a two-year Master's program usually has the equivalent of 120 ECTs.
In theory, we can say that a substance that contains 10 ECTs has almost twice the workload of a substance that contains only 5 ECTs. But why did we say "theoretically"?
What one ECT point means differs from country to country and ranges between 25-30 working hours. In Germany, for example, each ECTs is calculated as the equivalent of 30 working hours and the same is true for Belgium, Hungary and Romania. In Italy, Spain and Austria it is equivalent to approximately 25 ECTs.
However, this new system estimates the number of working hours for each subject in an approximate and average way, but there is nothing intermediate in learning. There are university subjects that may be full of new information for you and you need to spend a lot of time on it compared to other subjects that you have a previous idea about, which means that you can work in one of the subjects consisting of 5 working hours for periods that exceed the hours you work in a familiar subject Contains 10 working hours.
But does this mean that the ECTs are useless?
of course not!
Ects system 2
In most cases, these points can give you a good estimate of the workload involved in this program or material. This helps you when you study for a semester abroad, for example, or when you attend a specific subject outside your university, in this case you do not have to re-attend it at your university, thanks to this system, it will become very easy to obtain recognition of your university.
The ECTs evaluation scale
In addition to the ECTs points system, the assessment scale has been defined by the European Union. Because there are so many different systems attributable to the multiplicity of participating countries, it seeks to make the marks more comparable between those countries. This evaluation ladder does not replace the local evaluation system but exists as a support for the local system.
For example, it can be on your score book or other important academic papers. And like the American system of evaluation, it is based on the grades of one class, and this means that the grades show the level of the student relative to the rest of the students in the same class. Before the evaluation, the results are divided into two subgroups: successful and precipitated. Therefore, the results are independent of students who did not pass the course. This system is defined in the following way:
A: She is the best 10% of the class.
B: The next 25%.
C: The next 30%.
D: The next 25%.
E: The next 10%.
FX: Fail (or barely successful).
F: failure.
Because of the relative nature of this scale, it gives only a slight idea of student performance since it depends on the performance of the entire class, which can vary a lot, especially in small groups. The same student can achieve different grades with the same performance due to the difference in the class students who are active, hard-working, or weak and lazy.
However, the ECTs evaluation scale is more transparent than many local systems, and can be useful in the future when you want to compare your academic performance with other students in Europe.
For ease of calculation, each 60 ECTs are equivalent to the workload of a full-time registered student within one academic year. The workload of a student enrolled in a full-time program in most of Europe ranges between 36-40 weeks per year, and in this case, as we mentioned at the beginning of the article, every 25-30 working hours are considered one point on the ECTs system (one point of ECTs = 25-30 working hours).
As we have seen, the ECTs make the curriculum easy to read and more comparable for all students, both local and international. It thus facilitates transportation between different universities in different countries, as well as academic recognition of the student’s performance in his first university.
Author: Steav