Finland

EMREX in Finland

In Finland, the EMREX network is powered by CSC – IT Center for Science. CSC used to coordinate the Erasmus+ funded EMREX project during the years 2015-2017 and continues to support actively the EMREX network and its further development.

CSC is a Finnish center of expertise in ICT that provides ICT expert services for research, education, culture, public administration and enterprises. CSC is a non-profit company owned by the Finnish state and higher education institutions.

EMREX Data Provider (EMP)

What kind of data is available from Finland?

In Finland, all higher education achievement records are available from the National Data Warehouse (Virta), which is connected to the Finnish EMP. Thus all individuals – students or former students – can retrieve their achievement records by using EMREX assuming that they still have valid Finnish access rights (HEI/HAKA username).

VIRTA is a centralized database in which institutes of higher education (HEI) keep partial copies of their student and other person registries. Altogether, achievements of 38 HEI’s in Finland, incl. 1.3M students are included in VIRTA. This means that students can fetch all their Finnish study records from one common database. The EMREX Data Provider (EMP), which is a national technical solution operated by CSC, will send a request to Virta for retrieving achievement records. The EMP is a stand-alone solution and run by the CSC network.

The provision of secondary education achievement records is currently under discussion with National Board of Education (EduFi).

EMREX Client (EMC)

There are several Student Information Systems (SISs) in use among the Finnish HEIs. Thus, the Finnish HEIs need to decide independently how they wish to deploy their Student Mobility Plug-ins (EMC).

During the field trial phase, connection from the SIS to the stand-alone SMP was done by implementing a simple weblink. The retrieved study achievements was sent by encrypted e-mail to the administrator and the student as a PDF file and/or an .xml, and the information is transferred to study records. The same solution is still used by some Finnish HEIS as at the same time there is a major development work taking place regarding the new SISs Peppi and Sisu. EMREX is included in the roadmaps.

Should you be interested in getting access to your achievement records in Finland or in any other country within the EMREX Network, please contact your study administration at your home institution and ask how you can access your data by using EMREX at your higher education institution.

MANAGEMENT AND SUPPORT

For any questions regarding EMP, EMC or EMREX in Finland please contact emrex-admin@postit.csc.fi