Read more about the workload, our grading system, attendance rules, plagiarism, exams and our Writing Guide.
Courses are denominated in EC credits. The European Credit (EC) was developed by the Commission of the European Union in order to provide common procedures within Europe to guarantee academic recognition of studies abroad.
In EC credits, 60 credits represent the workload of a full year of study. 1 EC is the equivalent of 28 hours and includes lectures, reading, preparation for exams, independent study, and the writing of papers. A 5 EC course has approximately 5 contact hours a week.
The minimum amount of EC students are required to take per term is 5 EC. The fulltime (and maximum) workload during the exchange programme is 30 EC per semester (15 EC per term), which equals 840 student working hours.
In the Netherlands, the traditional grading scale is from 1 to 10, where 1 is the lowest and 10 the highest grade. The passing mark for a single subject is 5.5. Grades 1-3 are very rarely given, and the same is true for grades 9-10*. The most common grades in higher education are 6 and 7.
For more information about the Dutch Grading System, check out the Nuffic website.
Some more
* Grading practise in the Netherlands differs from the rest of the world inasmuch as the really high grades (10 and 9) are rarely awarded, regardless of the achievements of a given group of students. It is part of the grading culture in the Netherlands, dating back to the late 19th century when the scale from 10 to 1 was officially introduced. At the time, it was decided that a 10 should only be awarded in the case of absolute perfection. But as it was felt to be almost blasphemous for mere mortals to be the judge of absolute perfection, a 10 was hardly ever awarded. Instead, the 9 was considered to be a slightly less impossible goal to reach. With the advent of multiple choice testing and the yes/no type of questions, 10s and 9s came within reach of ambitious students. To this day, however, these grades are still very rarely given in oral examinations or open question testing, such as essays, presentations, project reports or dissertations.
Source: Nuffic
It is important to note that for all work forms (e.g. work groups, tutorials, seminars, workshops), except for lectures*, attendance is mandatory. The following procedure applies here:
- If a student is unable to attend, he or she must notify the lecturer in advance, providing reasons.
- A student who is absent once or twice may fulfil the attendance obligation without any measures, provided that the student is indeed present for all other classes. However, any missed regular assignments must still be fulfilled.
- A student who is absent more than twice is excluded from the subject.
* Generally lectures are not mandatory, and there are no sanctions for not attending lectures. However, there are some exceptions. If the lecture is mandatory, this will be stated in the description in courses.eur.nl
A person is guilty of plagiarism if the work of other authors is used in part or in full in papers, theses and other written assessments of competence without stating the source (books, journal article, report, internet website, etc.). Such use of texts also includes quoting or paraphrasing without clearly indicating that this has been done. Plagiarism is strictly forbidden, and sanctions will be imposed by the Examination Board if the lecturer signals that plagiarism has taken place.
You are not automatically registered for the resit of the written examination. You are responsible for this registration yourself and can register for the resit via Osiris Student. Registration is possible starting 26 working days up to and including 5 working days in advance of the resit date.
Resit exams generally take place in summer. You can always take the resit of an exam, also if you passed the exam and/or the course. The highest grade counts.
If you wish to improve your grade even though you have a passing grade for the course, you must register yourself for the resit exam via Osiris. You can do this 26-5 workdays in advance of the resit date. You can take a maximum of three resits per academic year.
In highly exceptional cases, it is possible to request an online proctored exam. Please check here to see if you are eligible for online proctoring.
Registration for written examinations is possible up to 5 working days in advance of the resit date. In case you forgot to register for the resit, then you may still register late in Osiris until the day before the resit takes place. The administrative fee is €20 per resit examination and after completion of your registration you will be referred to a payment module, where you can select your payment option and finish the payment. After completing the payment, you will be automatically registered for the resit.
You can see the resit exam date in your timetable if you are registered to the course. Want to plan ahead, also for courses you're not registered to just yet? Then you can load the exam dates for specific courses on MyTimetable (only for viewing purposes!):
- Log in on MyTimetable.
- Click Add timetable
- Under Exams, click Course
- Search and select the course(s) you want to know the exam dates for
Note that schedules might change due to circumstances. Therefore, it is wise to check the latest information on your MyEUR app around the time of the examination period.
ESHCC has a mix of lecture-based and seminar/tutorial-based courses. Lecture courses contain up to 200 students, whereas tutorials and seminars vary in size from 15 to 25 students. Within the courses assignments can be either small teamwork or individual assignments.
All students at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication are expected to use the regulations set out in the Writing Guide in their assignments.