What is NordForum?
Nordforum is an informal collaboration initiative between organizations dealing with Student Information Systems in the four Nordic countries and the Netherlands.
The starting point was at the conference EUNIS 2006 in Tartu. The first regular meeting was held in 2007 in Tallin, with representatives from only two countries. After that meetings have been held usually each semester, with increased attendance from all four Nordic countries and the countries taking turn in being host. In 2016, the spring meeting was held in Groningen, thus extending the network to the Dutch organization DUO which have much in common with the other members.
The glue that keeps the group together is that all are national providers of Student Information Systems, representing a majority of universities in each country. The situation in the member countries is also fairly similar when it comes to legislation, structure of higher education and ways of organizing administration. It is an informal arena for exchange of experiences and ideas and identifying possibilities for cooperation with long term goals as well as short term.
The outcomes from the group are substantial, especially taking in regard the small amount of resources put in. Nordforum has done benchmarking between the comparable systems at one occasion. Furthermore Nordforum has created a process mapping document for study administrative processes in the Nordic countries and also a common glossary with translations to English and a mapping to European standards, such as LMAI (ISO/IEC 19479) and MLO. Nordforum is last but not least also the foundation for the EU-project EMREX with the goal of transferring credits between countries in student mobility. EMREX is about to end in 2017 and seems to be a success.
Nordforum has organized three larger seminars in Oslo, Stockholm and Helsinki. The general theme, apart from sharing experiences and best practice, has been how to make administration of student mobility easier.
Nordforum consists of people from
- Sikt – Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research Unit (Norway) (previously known as UNIT - Direktoratet for IKT og fellestjenester i høyere utdanning og forskning, previously know as CERES – Nasjonalt senter for felles systemer og tjenester for forskning og studier)
- CSC - IT Center for Science (Finland)
- DUO, Dienst Uitvoering Onderwijs (the Netherlands)
- Danish Agency for Institutions and Educational Grants (Denmark)
- The Peppi Consortium (Finland)
- Funidata Oy (Finland)
- The Ladok Consortium (Sweden)
- Swedish Council for Higher Education, UHR (Sweden)
- Universities Estonia (Estonia)
- (Iceland)
Nordforum meetings
Read more about the student information systems in the countries here.